


Always Be a Good Boy (Don't Ever Play With Guns)

by roaroftheninth



Series: The Prison AU [1]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Police, Alternate Universe - Prison, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Crimes & Criminals, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-26
Updated: 2013-05-03
Packaged: 2017-12-09 12:40:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 31,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/774299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roaroftheninth/pseuds/roaroftheninth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prison AU. "Louis takes to prison like a fish takes to water, like he was born to while away his days in captivity - and maybe he was, if he decides to believe any of that written-in-the-stars nonsense. Louis is a firm believer that you write your own destiny. He’s just not very good at endings, is all."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Freezing Slow Time (Away From the World)

Prison doesn’t suit Harry Styles.

 

Louis - _Louis_ is good at this. He’s been in and out of the system since he was fifteen, when his parents kicked him out and he hit the road with mixed results. Louis has had some great times and he’s also had some really, really shitty ones, but all roads have always led back here – Leeds, Moorland, or even Full Sutton. Same bars, different window. Louis takes to prison like a fish takes to water, like he was born to while away his days in captivity - and maybe he was, if he decides to believe any of that written-in-the-stars nonsense. Louis is a firm believer that you write your own destiny. He’s just not very good at endings, is all.

 

Harry Styles, though – Harry Styles is not cut out for the prison life. It’s not just that some of the bigger inmates can pick him up with one arm, although that’s part of it, and it’s not just because he’s got sea-green eyes and god _damn_ , those curls (although those are part of it, too). It’s more of a sense of urgency in his bones, which some of the inmates mistake for nervousness or anxiety. Louis could almost laugh in their faces. Harry isn’t anxious, he’s _restless_. He’s not at his best in confined spaces, pacing like a caged tiger, wanting to gather everyone around and make big plans and grin like the world is at his feet – even though, when he first shows up, he certainly doesn’t have any friends in here. Harry seems like someone who makes friends easily, on the outside. Louis likes that about him, even though he thinks trusting people at the drop of a hat is a recipe for pain.

 

He wants that to be a lesson that Harry learns, even though Louis could never bear to teach it to him.

 

\--

 

The sun is surprisingly hot for May. Louis lounges in the shade next to the high, cool concrete walls, stripped down to those ubiquitous orange jumpsuit pants and a worn-out wifebeater. He takes the cigarette that’s offered to him by Josh, one of the guys Louis might actually trust when his back is turned, and lights up. It’s hard to care very much about anything when it’s this hot, and as the prison bus trundles along on the other side of the fence, Louis is maybe ten per cent interested in seeing the fresh meat.

 

It’s good to know your competition, but Louis isn’t worried. He scratched and bit and outwitted everyone on his way to the top of whatever name you want to give the hierarchy in here, and he’ll do it again if he has to. This isn’t his first rodeo; Louis knows how not to get fucked with in prison.

 

He taps the end of the cigarette absently and wonders if the new boys will be that lucky.

 

Some of them will do okay. They’ll have had practice in other joints, or they’ll instinctively know what to do (Louis envies those ones). Some of the other ones are going to spend their time in the big house hiding from their own shadow, and Louis has no sympathy for them. He’s easy to get along with, but Louis is not _nice_. You don’t survive as long as he has by having a bleeding heart for every idiot who can’t hack it.

 

So that’s why he’s kind of surprised when this kid gets off the bus – he can’t be more than twenty, maybe twenty-one – and looks straight at him. Don’t get Louis wrong, here; the kid’s tall, but he’s not exactly built like a linebacker. He’s got a wide mouth and Disney Princess eyes and the prison wolves are probably already eyeing him from the other side of the yard because all signs point to the fact that he’s going to get taken _apart_ in here. But there’s something in the stubborn way he won’t drop his gaze, even when Louis raises an eyebrow at him, and the way he looks around like he can’t hear the jeering as he’s ushered inside with the others, that makes Louis remark on him.

 

“See that kid?” Josh asks.

 

“Big hair?” Louis says.

 

Josh nods. “He’s going to get demolished in here.”

 

“Got that right.”

 

Josh tosses his cigarette and pushes away from the wall. “Looked like he liked you.”

 

Louis’ mouth tugs upward into a half-grin. “Who knows what he’s in for? Maybe he cuts up guys that look like me into a million pieces and buries them in his grandma’s basement.”

 

“Then watch your back because that boy just painted a target,” Josh says.

 

\--

 

The next time Louis sees the new kid, they’re at lunch. Like any day on which so-called new recruits arrive, the cafeteria is louder than usual, buzzing with speculation. Some people are off-limits already. There’s a skinny dark-eyed guy whose uncle is some big-time Boston crime boss, and his associates on the inside are making it pretty clear that Skinny is not to be fucked with. There’s another guy, a monster with an assortment of racist tattoos stamped across the back of his thick neck, and it’s already apparent where he’s going to sit on the food chain by virtue of his sheer size. One or two of the other guys have been in here before and they’ve got friends inside, so they won’t have to work as hard to earn their stripes again.

 

The rest, though – everyone is sizing up the rest like they’re so much meat on display, and Louis is not an exception. Some of the guys are tossing insults out there, and there’s a palpable hum of nervousness from some of the newbies as they wait in line for lunch. Niall is taking bets already.

 

“Nick’s got fifteen on the Indian kid crying first.”

 

“I’ll take that bet.”

 

“Twenty says it’s the red-head.”

 

Niall nudges Louis. “Want to put some cash on Curly?”

 

“No, I do not,” Louis says, eyeing the kid with the big hair as he makes small talk – Louis thinks,  _are you serious_  – with the serving staff. No one talks to the serving staff, unless it’s to make derogatory comments about the food which – yeah, so everyone talks to the serving staff, but none of it is nice. Based on the looks on their faces, like Curly has grown an extra arm and slapped them with it, they’re unaccustomed to the practice of being talked  _to_  rather than talked  _at._

 

“Oh, that one’s Louis’ new girlfriend,” Josh says.

 

Louis plants a hand on the side of Josh’s grinning face and gives him a light push. “I won’t put money on him crying first, but I’ll put money on him getting the shit kicked out of him first,” he offers. He can see the way other people are watching the kid, too, like sharks that smell blood in the water. One of the kitchen staff is telling him something, and the kid is nodding like he’s never heard more important news in his life. Louis doesn’t think the kid has any idea what kind of reception a friendly attitude is going to get you in here, especially if you’re a pretty face.

 

Curly turns around and looks for somewhere to sit, and immediately the jeering rises in volume. To his credit, the kid seems to take it in stride; he starts off down the middle of the cafeteria, those outrageous green eyes scanning for somewhere to sit. He has no shortage of invitations or threats.

 

Louis grins when the kid sits down next to the Giant.

 

It must have taken some keen observation skills, Louis will give him that. The Giant - his real name might be Paul, but no one calls him that - is almost seven feet tall, and he’s built like a brick shithouse. He  _looks_  terrifying, but since the fresh meat came in, he hasn’t made a single sound, focused instead on his lunch. He doesn’t, and has never, to Louis’ knowledge, fucked with a new recruit, because as big as he is, he has an IQ of about four. Nobody gets into it with the Giant because the first guy who tried got a fist the size of a ham wrapped around his neck, and the Giant didn’t let go until the guards put a taser between his shoulder blades.

 

The Giant gives Curly a faintly irritated look, but he doesn’t say anything or stop eating. Louis sees the kid’s shoulders relax ever so slightly in relief, and Louis has to admire the colossal balls it must take to act like he just started at a new school instead of a maximum security prison.

 

It’s not smart, mind. But it’s brave.

 

Most of lunch passes without incident, until right at the end. Some of the wolves have been inching closer and closer to Curly’s table, and now there are two of them practically leaned right over him. Louis nudges Niall and they both turn to watch.

 

“You think the Giant’s gonna save you? The Giant doesn’t know you exist, he doesn’t give a shit about you.”

 

The kid eats his lunch like it’s his job and doesn’t even look up. He’s doing an impressive job of looking singularly unconcerned.

 

One of the wolves slams his hand down on the table, like he thinks he hasn’t sufficiently gotten Curly’s attention, and leans down, right into his face.

 

And that’s when, in a quick-draw motion that Louis doesn’t see coming, the kid’s hand rises and falls – and the wolf flinches back, howling.  

 

“What did he do?” Louis asks, in the beat that passes before chaos erupts.

 

Niall lets out a peal of startled laughter. “He just  _buried his fork in the back of Ray-Ray’s hand._ ”

 

Behind them, Nick whoops as the kid scuttles out of the way, narrowly avoiding a vicious back-hand from Ray-Ray’s partner in crime, Nigel. The Giant, annoyed, displays this by rising and flipping the table. Everyone is crowding around, shouting or initiating fights of their own, and the guards are on it in a heartbeat, wading into the melee even as Louis, his crowd, and a handful of others stay well clear of the action and shout encouragement and insults in turn into the mess.

 

“Was that supposed to be a sucker punch?  _Put your purse down next time._ ”

 

“Need me to hold your skirts while you pull his hair, Jimmy?”

 

Louis remembers to look for the kid when everything starts to die down, but Curly is lost in the crowd.

 

\--

 

Unsurprisingly, nobody ‘saw’ who started what, so the most the Warden can do is put them all on lockdown for their yard time. Louis has dubious honour of having the cell next to the new kid, but throughout the afternoon, there’s not a sound from the cell next door. Louis is smugly satisfied when Nick’s Indian kid starts to cry almost the moment it’s dark. He’s oddly proud of Curly, who has managed to avoid long-term physical damage on his first day; the kid’s got style.

 

It’s going to cost him, but he’s got style.

 

Louis is out in the yard the next day, in the shade again, when Ray-Ray and his sidekick, Nigel, come by.

 

“Hey. You seen that kid?”

 

Louis raises his eyebrows. “Which kid?”

 

“What the fuck kid do you think?” Ray-Ray snarls, holding up his bandaged hand.

 

“The one that made you look like a moron?” Niall supplies helpfully.

 

“Refresh my memory,” Louis drawls. “Someone makes you look like a moron twenty-five times a day, I lose track.”

 

Ray-Ray is one of the assholes who thought they could take advantage of Louis when he first got here, too. There are people like him everywhere, Louis knows by now; they’re weak, but they hide it by being bullies. It’s not that Louis has never taken advantage of someone weaker, but he just thinks, on principle, that if you’re truly the king of the yard, you don’t have to wave it in peoples’ faces; they just know. It’s about respect. Ray-Ray and his cronies have never deserved any.

 

“You’re a fuck-up, Tomlinson,” Nigel says.

 

 “Welcome to prison?” Louis offers, even as Josh snickers.

 

The two of them slouch off. And then Louis says, looking nowhere in particular, “Curly, if you’re going to stab a man with a fork, at least come out and trash-talk him about it afterward like a proper felon.”

 

Niall looks at him, confused, but his expression turns startled when the kid slides out from around a corner, looking rueful.

 

“You knew I was there,” the kid says.

 

“Lucky guess,” Louis replies cheerfully. “Imagine you hadn’t been and I’d said that and then this bunch of delinquents spotted you wandering around over there somewhere.”

 

The kid grins. “Glad I could help. Can I have a cigarette?”

 

Louis gives him a considering look. “Are you going to stab me with a fork?”

 

“Are you going to shout things at me while I’m eating?”

 

Louis grins. “Not now that I know better.” He holds out the little kit he keeps his smokes in, and Harry takes two, tucking one behind his ear.

 

“Is this going to cost me?”

 

Louis lights up his own dart. “The first one’s on me.”

 

“I’m Harry Styles,” Curly says, and he doesn’t extend a hand but there’s a curiosity in his eyes that pulls you in, in almost the same way.

 

“Louis.” Louis indicates the rest of the guys lounging in the shade to his left. “Everyone else.” Niall waves, but other than him, Josh is the only one who nods in response.

 

“What’re you in for?” Harry asks.

 

“Guess.”

 

Harry surveys him, head cocked. “Armed robbery.”

 

Louis flicks ashes off the end of his cigarette. He likes this game, because it’s always fascinating to find out what other people project onto you. You can tell a lot about a person based on his assumptions about you. “Try again.”

 

“Really?” Harry considers him. “You’re not that much stronger than me. If you were on the street, you’d need a gun.”

 

“Do I have a gun in here, Harry Styles?”

 

Harry concedes that he doesn’t.

 

“Have you seen anyone walk all over me yet?”

 

Harry mulls it over. “Fraud, then,” he says at last, and Louis’ eyes light up.

 

“Fraud. Extortion. Theft over five thousand.” Louis expels a long stream of smoke and says, in a delightfully flat voice: “But I’m innocent.”

 

Harry huffs a sound that’s half-disbelief, half-laughter. “So am I.”

 

“Hey, Niall, are you innocent?” Josh pipes up.

 

“You bet. You?”

 

Josh nods. “Me, too. Nick, what’d you do again?”

 

“I  _allegedly_  shot my boss. But I’m not guilty.”

 

“No, definitely not,” someone says.

 

“If I  _had_  killed him, they’d have found twenty bullets in him instead of six.”

 

“A hand gun only holds six, Nick,” someone informs him.

 

“I wasn’t using a hand gun,” Nick protests.

 

“How do you know? I thought you weren’t there!”

 

Four or five guys laugh. Louis just grins.

 

Over the next couple of days, the immediate witch-hunt for Harry Styles dies down, largely because the guards always crack down in the aftermath of a riot and it isn’t smart to be caught out breaking the rules right now. But it’s also partly because Harry always manages to evade Ray-Ray and the others, which has to be the first time Louis has ever seen an evasion tactic work in here on the long-term. Louis isn’t sure how he does it, because the yard isn’t that big, but the wolves aren’t renowned for their unusually high IQs so he doesn’t question it. At least part of the time, Harry skulks around where Louis, Niall, and the others stand or lean in the shade, and Louis doesn’t send him away because there’s something about Harry Styles that he just _likes_.

 

They get into poker on the second day, because Harry wants to win his own cigarettes. He’s got the worst poker face ever – he’s got about eighty-five tells for every hand there is, and Louis learns them all in no time flat – but he’s great at distractions. He’s on his fourth game of poker since Louis gave him the run-down on how it works, and Niall is mid-sentence arguing with him over something inane when Harry slaps his cards on the table and announces, “I think I win.”

 

Niall gapes at him.

 

“His face practically had  _full house_  written on it in permanent ink,” Josh says, grinning at Niall’s utter confusion. “Come  _on,_ Horan.”

 

“He told me Bono’s the greatest recording artist to come out of Ireland and I couldn’t let that stand,” Niall protests, tossing down his cards.

 

“He played you like a violin.” Louis snags Niall’s cards and adds them to deck. “You used to be a champion among criminal masterminds. What’s the retirement package like with that gig?”

 

“I’ll retire my hand in your face,” Niall mutters, which for some reason makes Josh almost fall off the picnic table laughing.

 

“Are you actually a criminal mastermind?” Harry asks with interest.

 

“A bit,” Josh replies, when Niall doesn’t immediately answer.

 

Because being _a bit_ of a criminal mastermind sounds to Harry like being _a bit_ pregnant, he frowns. “But you’re in prison.”

 

“Niall goes to prison like normal people holiday in Majorca,” Louis says.

 

“Which is to say, for two weeks every autumn because he wants to get away from it all,” Josh adds cheerfully.

 

“He looks in travel brochures,” Nick pipes up. “’ _I hear San Quentin’s nice this time of year._ ’”

 

“Fuck off,” Niall says.

 

Harry can’t tell how much of this is legitimate and how much is them ragging on Niall, but he grins anyway.

 

Harry begins to fall into the routine of prison life, with its predictable rhythm: He rises at the same time every morning, gets ready in the same way, eats the same breakfast, performs the same chores, and goes to bed at the same time. Harry’s never sure if Louis has a hand in this or not, but Harry ends up on his work detail, in the dim heat of the bakery that lies on the northwest corner of the prison grounds. The entire prison facility is self-sustaining, so there are teams who till the earth and others who tend to the laundry or do janitorial work. Harry’s glad to find himself in the bakery, not least because he still has to watch his back and it feels easier with Louis around (whether the latter actually has his back or not). Harry used to work in a bakery too, ages ago, and this work is easy to grow accustomed to.

 

Two weeks in, Louis cuts his hand slicing one of the hundreds of loaves of bread they make every week and a guard directs him to the infirmary. Harry doesn’t even notice he’s gone at first, engrossed in the surprisingly stress-relieving task of rolling dough, until someone’s fingers curl into the back of his collar.

 

“Where’ve you been hiding, Harry Styles?”

 

Harry’s fingers tighten around the rolling pin in his hand. Whatever they may have charged him with to put him in prison, he’s not a violent person, and he has no idea what he means to do with that rolling pin. But then it doesn’t matter anyway because he feels a sharp, poisonous pressure against his side. When he looks down, he sees a short, wicked finger-length of metal pressed against his ribs, sharpened to a point he can feel through his jumpsuit. He releases the rolling pin at once. The makeshift knife doesn’t go away.

 

“I wouldn’t say I’ve been hiding,” Harry says, and then he’s falling. He hits the ground chest-first, and he scrapes his chin even as it knocks the wind out of him. His fingers are scrabbling against the tiles, but it doesn’t mean anything because his brain can’t immediately coordinate what it should be doing.

 

A heavy weight presses down on Harry’s lower back, and Harry thinks,  _No. Nope. Not allowed._ But it’s disjointed and he can’t crawl out from under whoever is sitting there.

 

“Stop moving or I’ll cut you open,” a voice warns.

 

“No, no. Let him struggle, it’s more fun that way,” a second voice says.

 

Someone reaches around under him for the zipper to his jump suit, and Harry struggles in earnest this time because he can’t joke his way out of this, he has no weapons handy and he should’ve chanced that rolling pin while it was still an option, homemade blade or not –

 

Someone grabs a handful of hair and slams his face into the ground so hard that Harry blacks out for a second, and he only comes back for the second half of a sentence, someone saying,

 

“ – can’t find it when he’s moving around this fucking much.”

 

Harry’s face  _throbs_ , and he’s dizzy, but keeps on reaching out, tearing at the empty air. If he can find something, anything – or pull something down, make a noise – would anyone even come?

 

And then a shoe comes down on one hand, and Harry nearly passes out from how much it hurts as whoever it is grinds their heel into his fingers.

 

“Got it,” says the weight on his back, as he finds the zipper and tugs, and Harry spits out the blood in his mouth and realizes that they don’t care if he yells, because  _no one is going to come_.

 

He grits his teeth and drags his damaged hand back toward him, determined to protect at least that before any worse can happen to it. A panicky, churning _knowing_ spreads through his gut; that there’s nothing more he can do to protect himself. This is happening whether he likes it or not.

 

And then suddenly, the weight on his back is gone.

 

Harry immediately stretches out his good hand to drag himself away, but someone settles a hand firmly on the back of his head and he freezes, eyes squeezed shut, thinking,  _fuck, my teeth_  – because he knows what’s coming, but then it doesn’t.

 

Whoever it is, one of their fingers is flush against his ear, and there’s an odd texture; Harry’s dizzied brain takes a moment to settle on,  _bandage?_

 

_Whose hand is bandaged –_

 

“Harry Styles is  _mine._ ” Louis Tomlinson will tease and make snide remarks all day long, but Harry has never heard him sound quite like this. His tone leaves no room for discussion on whether or not he’s in control of the situation now, and Harry thinks, suddenly: _this is why everyone follows him._  

 

There’s a scuffling and the sound of feet retreating hurriedly on the tile, but the hand doesn’t shift from Harry’s head. He realizes belatedly the possessiveness of the gesture, what it means, but he can’t connect the dots because he can’t even get his eyes to properly focus. He’s pretty sure he has a concussion, but doubts this will make any more sense later. He can only take it in and do his best with it.

 

“He attacked me, the first fucking day he was here.”

 

Harry recognizes the voice now; it belongs to Ray-Ray, the inmate whose been hassling him.

 

“I don’t give a shit if he skinned your grandmum and made you wear it in front of all of your friends,” Louis says, his voice low, level, and  _cold._  “I don’t play nicely in the sandbox when I have to share and he’s  _mine._ ”

 

Ray-Ray’s accomplice, whose name might be Nigel, gives a laugh that aims for derisive but falls a little short. Later, when Harry gets to see the look on Louis’ face when he’s furious, he’ll understand why. Right now, it makes as little sense as everything else. “You’re not fucking him, Tomlinson. You never get involved in that.”

 

Louis’ grip tightens very slightly on Harry’s head, and it’s almost a warning. “Tell them how it is, Styles.”

 

Harry has no idea what’s going on, why he’s suddenly become the centre of a turf war, and as far as he knows he and Louis have never –

 

“Styles,” Louis repeats carefully.

 

“Yeah,” Harry says, because that seems to be what Louis wants, and honestly, his head is spinning too much to argue. “Yeah, we – you know, we just – do it. All the time. I’m surprised we get any work done, frankly, with how much we’re always at it. ‘Want to play cards, Harry?’ ‘Nah, I can’t, I’ve got to pop off and play hide the sausage, which I _suppose_ is a bit similar except everyone’s naked and there are no cards – ”

 

Nigel makes a noise of disbelief, and Louis says conversationally, “It’s your own fault for concussing him, you know.”

 

Ray-Ray sounds helplessly furious. “ _You_  concussed  _me_  just now – ”

 

“Walk away,” Louis says pleasantly.

 

Harry hears them go, hastily, and when Louis finally rolls him over, Harry realizes that Louis has the rolling pin in his free hand and there’s a nauseating spray of blood and hair on it.

 

Louis sets it aside before Harry can ask any questions and peers into his eyes. “Your pupils are blown, mate. Let’s get you to the infirmary.”

 

“They broke my – ” Harry winces, cutting himself off as he catches his damaged fingers on the folds of his jumpsuit.

 

Louis gently catches Harry’s hand and turns it over. The sight of his own mangled fingers makes Harry nauseous – which might also have something to do with the concussion – but Louis appears unaffected. “You’re falling apart, Harry Styles,” he says lightly, and tucks Harry’s broken hand against his chest. “Up you get.”

 

With Louis’ arm around his waist, Harry somehow manages to end up upright, although he’s so dizzy that he staggers.

 

“I’m gonna fall off the floor,” he announces. “Right off.”

 

“I don’t think so,” Louis replies, guiding him out of the bakery and onto the lawn.

 

“How do you know?” Harry asks, leaning into Louis more than he’d like to because the sunlight disorients him.

 

“Gravity, mostly,” Louis replies dryly.

 

When they reach the infirmary, Harry is whisked away by the same nurse who took care of Louis’ hand not half an hour earlier, and she just shakes her head at him. Louis doesn’t know  _why_ , because these things are never his  _fault_ , but she’s pretty so he winks at her just because. She shuts the door in his face.


	2. Tell Your Children (Not to Do What I Have Done)

When Harry wakes up, it’s to a dull headache and a distantly throbbing hand, both of which lead him to the conclusion that he is receiving some fairly excellent pain medication. He reaches up to touch his head, which feels curiously bigger than usual, and discovers to his belated chagrin that his hand is bandaged. He attempts the same maneuver with his other hand and comes into contact with more bandages wrapped around his forehead.

 

“Hey,” he calls, waving his bandaged hand about because that one’s bigger-looking and more likely to get attention.

 

A woman comes around the corner a moment later, and she looks harried. “What do you want?”

 

“I want.” Harry feels the words expand in his mouth like cotton. “Can I have a colouring book?”

 

The nurse rolls her eyes and comes over to check his IV drip.

 

“Never mind,” Harry decides a moment later, “My cast is on the wrong hand for colouring. Next time put the cast on the right hand for colouring.”

 

“I’ll take it under advisement,” the nurse says.

 

Harry is staring at the ceiling, counting his own teeth under his breath, when the deputy Warden and one of the corrections officers come into cubicle. Harry watches them with huge, glassy eyes, as they position themselves on either side of his bed.

 

“How are you feeling, son?” The deputy warden asks.

 

Harry twirls a finger in a circle. “I’m on a whirligig of really good drugs. So _superb_ is the answer to your question.”

 

The corrections officer coughs, but Harry just smiles winningly at him.

 

“Well, I’m – happy to hear that,” the deputy warden says. “We just need a statement real quick from you, if you could.”

 

“What kind of statement?” Harry asks, because he’s got thirty teeth, if that’s the statement they want. He used to have thirty-one, he’s pretty sure, but there’s a hole that he keeps putting his tongue into because it feels weird. He wonders idly where the tooth is now. Probably on the floor, still, in the bakery.

 

“We need to know who attacked you while you were working,” the deputy says bluntly.

 

Harry is still smiling like he’s waiting for a punchline. “Attacked me?”

 

The deputy and the officer glance at one another. “Son, you have a concussion and four broken bones in your hand. That’s the kind of thing you remember.”

 

“Oh. No. That didn’t happen.” Harry beams at them.

 

The deputy sighs. “Mr. Styles, someone came up behind you – ”

 

“Nope,” Harry says.

 

“Mr. Styles – ”

 

“Didn’t happen,” Harry says cheerfully.

 

The deputy, who has to be beyond used to this by now, scratches his head and exchanges glances with the corrections officer again.

 

“You just let us know if you remember anything,” the officer says, resigned, and the two of them leave. Harry goes back to counting teeth and wonders if Louis ever went back and got rid of that rolling pin.

 

\--

 

Harry rejoins the real world eight days after the attack. It’s early afternoon before he has a clean bill of health and shuffles out into the yard, squinting in the bright sunlight. His concussion means that he still has a dull throb in his skull and a sensitivity to light, so he pretends that’s why he’s glad to wander into the shade on the western wall where Louis, Niall, and the others spend their time.

 

Louis, less circumspect, tosses his cigarette and tucks Harry into a one-armed hug against his side, careful not to joggle his injured hand.

 

“He really did get his face smashed in,” Niall says, gaze traveling over the yellowing bruises across the sore half of Harry’s face.

 

“Where did you think he’s been for a week?” Louis asks. “On holiday?”

 

“Well, if he’s anything like you, he was lounging around in bed, making outrageous demands and milking the whole thing for all it was worth.”

 

“There was possibly a bit of that,” Harry admits. “But I did get my face smashed in. See?”

 

“Now you’re ugly enough to fit right in with this lot,” Josh tells him.

 

Niall grins. “And look – he even went and got his fingers properly mangled so that he can’t work either.”

 

“A man after my own heart,” Louis says.

 

“The deputy warden asked me what happened,” Harry blurts out, and he can feel Louis, whose arm is still slung around his shoulders, fix his gaze on him. Harry might be taller, but he has an ice-cold flashback to the bloodied rolling pin and knows that Louis has the strength and capacity for careless violence that makes his size matter less. Harry doesn’t know why, but he thinks that if he met Louis’ eyes, he might be afraid.

 

“Well, that’s simple enough. You smashed your face in,” Niall says, but even Harry can tell they’re all waiting for Louis. He thinks back to the way Louis had claimed him from Ray-Ray in that tone of voice that brooked no argument, and his subsequent conclusion: _this is why they all follow him._ He’s seeing it now, in real time, and it’s disconcerting at the same time as it makes his heart do a funny little skip that he can’t account for at all.

 

“I told them nothing happened,” Harry says quickly.

 

Louis’ eyes scan Harry’s face slowly, lingering on the circle around one eye where the swelling has been slow to go down. “You told them that  _nothing_  happened?” His tone of voice is all subtext:  _They bought that, did they?_

 

Harry does look at him then, because Louis brained someone for him and saved him from a humiliating assault and Harry wants him to  _trust_. “I was on a lot of pain killers. But I know what I said. I told them that there was no attack. Whether they want to officially write on their report some rubbish about me tripping and hitting my face on something is their business. But they won’t write that an attack happened because I said it didn’t.”

 

And unsaid, the answer to the question that Louis doesn’t ask:  _I didn’t tell them what you did to Ray-Ray. Cross my heart._

 

Louis releases Harry and steps away from him, but some of the tension drains out of the group as well.

 

“You learn fast, Harry Styles.” Louis sounds approving. “Although next time you have a concussion and a broken hand, there are stories a bit more convincing than  _nothing happened._ ”

 

“I was concussed,” Harry protests.

 

“Funny, that,” Josh says. “Ray-Ray got a concussion the  _same day_  as you.”

 

“They’re in vogue right now,” Louis replies mildly. “Did you want one?”

 

“I didn’t see him in the infirmary,” Harry interrupts, a little startled. He doesn't know why; he saw that rolling pin, afterward. But it surprises him anyway.

 

“Yeah, well, you wouldn’t have; they had to fly him out for emergency surgery. Swelling in the brain.” Niall indicates his skull, like he thinks a concussed Harry might need some clarification on where people generally keep their brains.

 

“I heard they’re transferring him,” Josh says. “He has some notion that there are people in here who might flay him if he comes back.”

 

“Why?” Harry asks, because Louis brained Ray-Ray but he didn’t  _threaten_  him, exactly.

 

“Obviously because he received an assortment of letters threatening to flay him if he comes back,” Niall says cheerfully, and Harry looks around at them all but finds not a single one who isn’t giving him the same vague, amused look.

 

“You - ?” Harry begins, but everyone ignores him as Niall promptly begins a conversation about something else.

 

\--

 

Harry has his chair pulled up to the front of his cell, and Louis has done the same on his side of the wall, lounging against the bars so that they can talk briefly before bed. It’s starting to become a habit.

 

“I found your tooth, by the way.”

 

Harry’s tongue automatically goes to the empty spot that becomes less raw as the days go by. “Yeah? What’d you do with it?”

 

“Thought I’d just hold onto it and cherish it always.”

 

Harry grins. “Make a necklace out of it.”

 

“I’ll send it to Ray-Ray as a token of our esteem.”

 

Harry’s smile subsides. “You know, I’m grateful for all of that.”

 

Louis’ tone gives away nothing. “Free dental work is free dental work, I suppose.”

 

“I mean for helping me,” Harry says, pressing on anyway. “You weren’t obligated to do that.”

 

Louis is silent for a moment. Harry has a hunch that Louis wishes he had a cigarette right now. He doesn’t seem like he’s overly good at conversations like these. “It comes with the territory,” he says after a while. “You run with me now. If anyone wants to grab you by your ridiculous curls, it’s going to be me.”

 

“They’re not ridiculous,” Harry defends, pushing them out of his face even as he says it.

 

“They’re possibly a bit ridiculous,” Louis answers, and Harry can hear the smirk in his voice.

 

Harry’s not sure why that makes him smile. “Well, thanks all the same.”

 

“Don’t mention it.”

 

There’s a lull in their conversation, and the quiet, intermittent buzz of chatter has stopped from the other inmates, too, as the guards make their rounds, issuing the call for lights out.

 

“Louis,” Harry says.

 

“Yeah, Styles.”

 

“What are you going to do when you get out?”

 

Louis shifts a little on his side of the wall. “I don’t know. Horan’s got a place on the coast. I might go and see what all the fuss is about.”

 

“That sounds good,” Harry replies.

 

“It wasn’t an invitation,” Louis says, but there’s a very faint note of affection in his tone.

 

“If I didn’t invite myself along places, I’d never go anywhere,” Harry tells him.

 

“Oh yeah? Is that how you ended up in this five-star establishment?” Louis asks, even as a corrections officer raps on the bars of Louis’ cell and orders them to get into bed and go to sleep.

 

\--

 

Harry goes back to work in the bakery around the same time as Niall gets out of prison. Harry’s hand is still tender, and he’s careful with it, but it’s no longer in the cast and he thinks he might go out of his mind with boredom if he doesn’t find something to do.

 

“All right there, Harry?” One of the other guys from the bakery, one Harry tentatively wants to call Greg, calls out to him.

 

“Dandy, thanks,” he replies, and he is. It doesn’t take more than a day or two to get back into the swing of things, and then he’s kneading dough with the best of them again.

 

When he gets out into the yard in the afternoon, he lights up a dart – Harry smokes because everyone else smokes; this is not a habit he’s going to continue when he gets out of prison – before he realizes that someone is missing.

 

“Where’s Niall?”

 

“Gone,” Josh replies. “Done a bunk.”

 

“Has he actually?” Harry asks, swinging around to look to Louis for confirmation. Louis just shrugs.

 

“What’d we tell you?” Nick says. “The retreat’s over; time to get back to work.”

 

“Had no idea prison worked like that,” Harry says. “Remind me why we’re all still standing around with our mouths hanging open?”

 

“Because Niall doesn’t really  _do a bunk_ ,” Louis says, sounding like his intelligence has been insulted by the very idea. “Does he? He’s got friends in high places. They wait until the cops and the lawyers and the judges involved turn their backs and go back to work, and then they spring him.”

 

“I think you’re just jealous he didn’t take you with him,” Nick says, and Harry doesn’t laugh because he sees the ugly flash in Louis’ eyes and knows abruptly that it’s true.

 

But Louis doesn’t give himself away. “You lot would be useless without me.”

 

“Yeah, we’d just fling ourselves off the top of the infirmary from grief,” Josh says.

 

“Couldn’t find our own backsides,” Nick declares.

 

Louis tosses his cigarette butt at them.

 

“Good for him, though,” Harry says suddenly, seriously. “Sometimes I think I’ll go mad in here.”

 

He can feel Louis watching him, but the others just nod thoughtfully.

 

“Good for him,” someone repeats, and they all share a moment of silence.

 

\--

 

As the weeks turn into months, Harry really does think he would go mad in here if it weren’t for Louis. They have a curious way of talking to one another that Harry has to admit he likes. Louis makes jokes that he could make for the benefit of everyone, but often he speaks quietly enough so that only Harry can hear him, like he’s sharing a secret.

 

Maybe it’s because Niall is gone, but Harry seems to have progressed up the ranks to Louis’ closest friend – although Harry doesn’t think it would ever occur to Louis to use the word ‘friend’ in any kind of prison-related context. He just sees life on the inside as more of a survival game than anything else, in which he can be perfectly friendly to those he deems fit but keeps them at arm’s length so that they remain disposable. He acts devil-may-care, but Harry thinks that anyone who believes the charade is an idiot: Louis is  _always_ paying attention.

 

It comes in handy, because it means that Louis calculates his actions based on what he can predict from other inmates, and that makes everything easier. He’s ahead of the curve on everything from what the spark will be that will cause the next riot to the latest gossip coming in from the outside. Louis is selective about what he shares, but Harry is fairly certain that he receives Louis’ confidence more often than most people. It makes him feel stupidly proud of himself – which, whatever, he’s not even going to analyze that. Louis is a convicted felon and not the type of person whose opinion should make Harry feel validated, but for some reason it does.

 

So that’s why it startles him when Nigel strides up to them in the cafeteria and in one deft motion, Louis grips Harry’s wrist and yanks his hand – the one he broke, months ago – out of the way. Nigel slams his heel into the edge of the bench, where Harry’s fingers were curled seconds before.

 

Louis’ fingers are cool around Harry’s wrist, and he doesn’t let go even as Nigel looks at them in white-faced fury and announces, “You’re a murderer.”

 

Harry’s heart flutters like a panicked bird against his ribcage, because he suddenly thinks back to the blurry bottomless agony on someone else’s face the last time he had those words shouted at him, hysterical –

 

Louis’ voice breaks through everything. Something about the way he sounds like they’re about to sit down for fucking afternoon tea drags Harry back. “Do tell.”

 

Harry doesn’t know what he expects Nigel to say, although afterward everything makes sense. “Ray-Ray died. Out east. _Complications from head trauma._ ”

 

Improbably – Louis didn’t  _tell_  him, which kind of feels weirdly like a betrayal – Harry can tell from Louis’ expression that he already knows. “He died in his sleep.”

 

“He died because you  _hit him with a rolling pin,_ ” Nigel hisses, and other inmates are starting to look their way now, curious and suspicious and entertained in varying measures.

 

“I don’t think so,” Louis replies calmly.

 

“You won’t get away with it,” Nigel says, his hands shaking with rage.

 

“I might.” Louis is looking up at Nigel with a blank, distantly interested expression that Harry knows he’d want to put his fist into if it were him.

 

He realizes with a start that Louis is trying to  _provoke_  Nigel.

 

Initially, that thought seems random and untenable and un _likely_ , because Harry can’t see a motive. But then Harry belatedly recognizes the object in Nigel’s clenched fist as the same tiny, wicked homemade shiv that they pressed into his ribs the day they attacked him in the bakery, and he marvels because there’s Louis, ahead of the curve again.

 

It’s incredibly stupid to have a weapon out in the open like this; Harry doesn’t know how you go about making a shiv and keeping it hidden in a maximum security prison, but there’s no way it’s  _easy_ , and if Nigel is caught with it he’s going to end up in solitary so long, he’ll die in there. But he’s too angry to think straight, and here he is, standing,  _trembling_  in front of them with a knife in his hand that no one can see yet but the two of them.

 

And Louis is trying to force it into the open.

 

There’s undeniable tension in the air, and there are already more than a few guards looking their way, eyes narrowed, wary for signs of a conflict.

 

Harry hopes they’re fast, because by the time they see the knife, Nigel will have it buried in Louis’ ribs.

 

“I’m going to put you in the hospital, and then I’m going to fuck your little bitch until I fucking _ruin_ him,” Nigel bites out.

 

Harry’s eyes narrow, because he’s not Louis’ _property_ , something that can be damaged without protest in order to affect Louis. And he’s not going to be assaulted until he can’t handle letting anyone touch him, not by Nigel or anyone fucking else. Harry may look young, but he has a sense of _self-worth_ , thanks.

 

And then Louis puts a hand on the back of Harry’s neck, and Harry just goes still, goosebumps prickling to life down all the surfaces of his skin. Louis glances at Harry, eyes locked on his, and very deliberately lets his gaze flick downward; it’s an invitation one person gives to another when no one is watching, much less the four hundred other inmates. Harry feels the goosebumps turn to molten heat in the pit of his stomach, and he wonders why he even lets himself react this way when Louis is only playacting.

 

“Oh, I don’t know if I’d mess with Harry Styles.” Just as suddenly as Louis froze Harry in place, his gaze is somewhere else. Harry feels like he’s been released from a spotlight, even as Louis smiles up at Nigel. “The last time you tried that, I think you had a baking accident.”

 

“The fewer casualties, the better, is what I find when it comes to baking,” Harry adds, for literally no sane reason he can think of, and in the blink of an eye it takes for Nigel to spin around, Harry realizes that he just made himself the target.

 

Louis’ hand is on his ribs and he’s shoving Harry away, even as Josh and Nick are on their feet and the sound of heavy running footsteps means the guards are coming. Harry doesn’t see any of it, because he loses his balance and falls hard on one knee and the hand he broke months ago. Pain shoots up into his wrist, and Harry has the sense to roll off of it and come down on his shoulder instead. By the time he sits up, cradling his forearm to avoid the sharp new ache in his hand, all he can see is a sea of jumpsuit-clad legs. Someone is shouting, and Harry recognizes Nigel’s voice. There’s an off-key quality to the sound of it, as though Nigel won’t be able to listen when they tell him to stop screaming, and it makes Harry uneasy. He pushes the feeling away, because he is too old to be afraid of madness.

 

Clambering to his feet, a little off-balance, Harry pushes his way through the crowd. The first person he spots is Nigel, restrained by four guards and still struggling, his eyes glassy. Harry can’t look at him because he’s looking for someone else.

 

When he sees him, Harry feel something contract under his heart because Louis is on his knees, forearms resting on the ground, head hanging at the right angle between his shoulder blades that prevents Harry from seeing his face from here. Even as Harry watches, the pretty nurse from the infirmary comes hurtling toward them, her older co-worker in tow. A corrections officer nearly blocks Harry’s view as the young nurse rests a hand on Louis’ shoulder and murmurs something to him. Louis raises his head and obediently shifts his weight with no grace at all, leaning hard against the bench behind him.

 

There’s a wound that tracks a perfect diagonal line across Louis’ face.

 

As is the nature with head wounds, there’s so much blood that Harry’s not sure how Louis breathes around it, whether his eye is okay under that shining, soaking creep-crawl of _red_. His other eye is shut, eyelashes dark against his cheek bone, and he seems to be murmuring something back to the nurse, so at least Harry knows he’s conscious and probably otherwise unharmed.

 

That’s as good as he gets, though, because the guards restraining Nigel have removed him. It’s time for the rest of them to return to their cells too, not because that’s routine for this time of the day, but because events like this defy routine and the Deputy Warden never has any better response for that than to lock them in their cells and hope they remember how this is all supposed to go tomorrow.

 

Harry keeps his eyes on Louis until he can’t see him anymore.

 

When he gets back to his cell, he lies back in his bunk, laces his fingers behind his head, and waits for Louis to show up in the next cell over and convince him that this is okay.

\--

 

Louis doesn’t come back the next day. The crew closes ranks in the yard, daring anyone to approach them, as though they need to make up for the fact that few of them know why they stick together now that both Louis and Niall are gone.  Harry smokes and waits, shoulders hunched.

 

When Harry wakes up the next morning, he is dragging sleep out of his eyes – Harry has never been a morning type of guy – when he hears the creak of a mattress and rustling on the other side of the wall. He goes to the bars at once.

 

“Louis?”

 

The rustling stops. There’s a pause. Then: “What’d I miss?”

 

“Oh, we developed a complex escape plan and began quietly murdering corrections officers,” Harry replies. “Nothing major.”

 

Louis chuckles, low-pitched and lazy. “Save some for me.”

 

“I’ll give it some thought,” Harry promises.

 

“You won’t be able to say no to this face.”

 

Harry’s been imagining that slick curtain of blood since it happened, like it’s a Polaroid someone tacked up front and centre in his consciousness. He knows that obviously now it’s been stitched up and the blood is gone, but there’s still a part of him that gives a shudder at seeing it again.

 

Harry only gets a glimpse when they step out into the corridor and turn for the march down to the cafeteria for breakfast. Louis winks at Harry when he sees him, and Harry has a moment of relief that Nigel didn’t manage to take an eye out. Then they’re on their way, and Harry doesn’t get a chance to look again until he’s sitting across from Louis at breakfast and they’re all eyeing him. Louis, unaffected, ignores everyone as he digs into his flavourless scrambled eggs.

 

“That’s going to be some scar, mate,” Josh says, and there’s awe and approval in his tone at the same time as there’s relief that it’s not _him_.

 

Harry can’t really blame him for that. When Louis glances up at Josh in acknowledgement, just a flicker of blue eyes, it’s like looking at a familiar sight in a broken mirror. His face is still _his face_ , but it’s bisected by a row of tight, dark stitches from his forehead, across his nose, and all down the opposite cheek. The skin around them is puffed up and red, and even if it heals clean, Harry knows that Josh has the right of it: There _will_ be a scar, and Louis is going to carry a reminder of Nigel around on his face for everyone to see, forever.

 

“I think it looks rakish,” Harry volunteers, because Louis isn’t going to be a mess about losing his looks – it’s not in his nature – but Harry has a hunch that a little levity will be appreciated. “Debonair, one might say.”

 

This time, Louis’s mouth has twisted upward on the uninjured side when he glances up. “One might say that.”

 

“Mind, I’m disappointed that you haven’t got an eye patch, but it’s always good to leave room for progress.”

 

Louis taps his fork lightly against his plate, mulling something over. “What happened to Nigel?”

 

“He’s in solitary,” Harry says. “He’ll be in there for ages, I expect.”

 

“You could press charges,” Josh points out.

 

“Yeah? So we’d get him back in here for another round?”

 

“Ah, right.”

 

Louis asks another question, one related more to the general reaction to his being slashed in the face full-on in the middle of the mess hall, and Harry takes the opportunity to tune out and just watch him. He’s as animated as ever, quick to smile, although it’s got a crooked quality to it now that the stitches interfere on one side. Harry thinks he’s being subtle, but when Louis’ eyes flick his way, he knows that Louis knows he’s being watched. It doesn’t seem to bother him any.   
  


\--

 

Louis tilts his face up to the sun. Even with the stitches gone, the mostly-healed wound that stretches diagonally across his face, from forehead to jaw, demands to be noticed. It is an angry red, and Harry watches everyone who talks to Louis try to keep their eyes off it, mostly in vain.

 

Harry kind of likes it, honestly. It feels like a secret, that he’s the only one who remembers how blue Louis’ eyes are because he’s the only one still looking.

 

Harry knows that it’s not smart to have thoughts like that about someone who is effectively your ringleader in prison, because the stories aren’t wrong about the abuse from the guards or the rapes that go on while everyone pretends to look the other way. Harry has very decisively looked the other way twice now. It’s not that he didn’t want to help; it’s just that the longer he’s in here, the longer he realizes how survival depends on your ability to look after yourself.

 

You can’t save people.

 

Louis proved that when he got his face cut open, and Harry doesn’t know if he has that kind of courage inside of him, to do that for someone he barely knows.

 

But however not smart it is to think about Louis’ mouth when it forms that crooked half-smile, or the sound of his voice, low and ominous, the day he rescued Harry from Ray-Ray and Nigel, Harry does it anyway, because a part of him wonders if Louis even minds.

 

Sometimes, when Harry glances at him, he finds Louis looking back, in an amused, predatory kind of way. Louis spends half of his time in the yard with Harry tucked under one arm, a cigarette in the other hand, and no one comments on it. Of course, Louis is touchy-feely with everyone he likes, ruffling Josh’s hair and play-fighting with Nick when he’s bored, but Harry wonders if the way Louis touches him isn’t perhaps just a little bit different.

 

As time passes, Harry loses track of the days of the week. He never loses track, though, of the number of days he’s been in captivity; he wears that number in his bones, so that even when he’s long gone, the days and hours and minutes will endure.

 

It’s not that prison is horrendous, because Harry’s surviving, and he’s got people to talk to, and there’s _Louis_ , so even though his mum never comes to visit, he’s not lonely or depressed. It’s just that he keeps thinking of prison as a temporary home until his life progresses and he moves onto something new, and it’s not. Harry’s going to be an old man by the time he gets out of here, and by then this life will be buried under his skin just like the tally of his captivity and he’ll have lost too much time.

 

He thinks about all of this while he’s sitting in the yard one afternoon, listening to Josh and Nick argue over the relative merits of prison tattoos. Louis is across the yard, trading jokes and snide remarks with an older bloke named Jerell ,or possibly Jeremy. Jerell/Jeremy is the one you go to if you want something smuggled in; he works in the mail room, and everyone knows he can get you pretty much anything for the right price. The way Louis is laughing with him, head tilted back, white teeth flashing in the sun, Harry knows that Louis is trying to bargain for something that he can’t afford.

 

The next time Harry focuses on them, though, the mood of the discussion has changed. Louis is still smiling, relaxed, but Jerell – Harry is going to say he’s 90% sure it’s Jerell – looks serious, and at one point he indicates the prison walls behind him. Louis glances back to look, unconcerned.

 

“That was quite the chat,” Harry says, when Louis saunters back in his direction.

 

“What are you implying?” Louis asks, with that half-smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. It's become habit now.

 

“Nothing,” Harry replies, drawing on his cigarette. “It’s not my business.”

 

“No, it’s not.” Louis climbs up next to Harry on the picnic table, his feet on the bench, and tells him anyway. “I heard a bit more than I’d like, if I’m being honest.” Louis squints in the sunlight, eyes fixed on some point across the yard.

 

“How do you mean?” Harry asks, watching him. There’s something strange to the set of his shoulders, like the relaxed pose from moments before was merely a very good charade.

 

“There’s apparently a very,  _very_  slanderous rumour getting around that I may have had something to do with the death of an inmate.” Louis glances at him, and the angle at which he tilts his head lets his eyes relax despite the bright sun.

 

“The death of an inmate?” Harry inquires, straight-faced. “Imagine that.”

 

“I’m appalled,” Louis agrees. Harry offers him a cigarette and Louis takes it, tucking it behind the ear that doesn’t already have one. “The thing is, while this is a very,  _very_  slanderous rumour, it’s no skin off my nose if it gets repeated.”

 

“But,” Harry says, as he senses one coming.

 

“But. Ray-Ray used to narc for our lovely and talented corrections officers.” Louis looks away again, at the tops of the walls and the guard towers. “They’ve been quietly keeping an eye out for someone to pin his death on, according to Jerell. And if they get wind of the very,  _very_  slanderous rumours, they might decide to establish whether these very,  _very_  slanderous rumours are true.”

 

“Ah.” Harry sees where Louis might be concerned.

 

“And this may come as a staggering shock to you,” Louis continues, “but it is possible that entirely circumstantial evidence could, in theory, link me to a crime scene and put me under suspicion.”

 

“Madness,” Harry declares.

 

“Absurd,” Louis agrees. “But still, I’m rather keen on my 2016 release date.”

 

“You’ve only got three years to go?” Harry asks.

 

“Yeah.” Louis glances at him, like he’s surprised he hasn’t mentioned it yet. “Did you think I was in all day?”

 

“I hadn’t thought about it,” Harry says honestly.

 

“Nope.” Louis retrieves one of the cigarettes balanced behind his ear. “I would’ve gotten more time for stealing a television. Here’s some professional advice at the start of your life of misdemeanors and delinquency, Harry Styles: White-collar crime nets the most profit for the least time behind bars.”


	3. Tonight There's Gonna Be Some Trouble

Louis doesn’t bring up the rumours again, but Harry starts to hear bits and pieces of them as he’s going about his day. They’re a group of several hundred men without much contact with the outside world, so anything juicy gets picked over and passed around until everyone is sick of hearing about it. Harry wishes it would blow over; the longer it’s in the air, the longer there’s a risk.

 

Harry’s on his knees, cleaning out an oven in the bakery, when the Deputy Warden approaches. Harry rocks back on his heels and shoots him an inquiring look without getting up. He vaguely remembers their last conversation, and nothing about the Deputy Warden inspires fear or even much respect.

 

“When you’re done your work here, someone’s going to take you up to my office. I want to have a quick sit-down with you.”

 

Harry doesn’t even get a chance to respond before the Deputy Warden is walking away. Harry watches him go for a long moment, then shrugs and goes back to work. He’s not really worried. It’s the Deputy Warden, for Christ’s sake.

 

Harry follows one of the guards up to the administrative building when his tasks are finished, wondering what this is about. He has a hunch that Louis’ fears about the Ray-Ray rumours might have come true, but unless they specifically have anything to prove it, he doesn’t see how Louis has anything real to worry about.

 

The Deputy Warden is frank. “When last we spoke, I asked whether anyone had attacked you.”

 

“Did you?” Harry’s hand flits past his temple. “Hardly remember. I was on some really good drugs that day.”

 

“Yes. I recall.” The Deputy Warden sweeps a hand over his desk, as though brushing away imaginary dust. “I was wondering if you knew the inmate Raymond Randall.”

 

Harry tilts his head, playing the idiot with wide eyes. “I don’t know anyone named Raymond. Sorry.”

 

“Hmmm.” The Deputy Warden studies him. “Some of the other inmates called him Ray-Ray.”

 

“Oh.” Harry pretends to give it some thought. “Yeah. Ray-Ray sounds familiar.”

 

“I understand he antagonized you when you were new here,” the Deputy Warden goes on, and Harry actually has to mentally sit back and be surprised at how much he knows.

 

“Just a bit,” Harry says with a shrug. “Harmless initiation stuff.”

 

The door behind Harry opens, and Harry cranes his neck around to see who it is. The man who comes in has white hair but sharp eyes, and he dismisses the Deputy-Warden at once. When he has settled himself in the Deputy’s place, Harry has a realization:  _This must be the Warden._

 

He’s never even heard anyone mention the Warden. He had been starting to wonder if the buck stopped at the Deputy.

 

“Harold Styles.”

 

“Harry,” Harry corrects immediately.

 

“Harry is such a  _common_  name.” The Warden’s tone is civil, but the way he says  _common_  like it leaves a taste in his mouth is warning enough.

 

Harry doesn’t have any response that the Warden is going to like, and something tells him to tread carefully around this man, so he doesn’t say a word.

 

“Do you think it’s common?” The Warden asks.

 

“Not as common as John or James,” Harry replies brightly, deliberately misinterpreting what he means by  _common_.

 

The Warden just looks at him. After a long moment, he says, “Mr. Styles, I would very much like to know why our mutual friend Nigel takes such issue with Mr. Tomlinson’s face.”

 

Harry would shrug, but the Warden’s eyes seem to hold him in place. “They’ve been at it with each other since before I came here.”

 

“Yes. However. I’ll sketch the outline of events for you, shall I? You and Raymond Randall were injured the same day. It is well-known that Tomlinson has incorporated you into his little gang.” The Warden says the word  _gang_  like they’re in pre-school and the concept of a gang is ludicrous. “Raymond died later from complications directly related to his injuries. Raymond’s close acquaintance, Nigel Trent, cut open Tomlinson’s face that very day. “

 

“Yes,” Harry agrees. “That’s an excellent timeline, and full of a series of impressive coincidences.”

 

“And so.” The Warden folds his hands on the desk. “I ask you again: Why does Nigel Trent believe that Raymond Randall’s death is Louis Tomlinson’s fault?”

 

“You could ask Nigel Trent,” Harry suggests.

 

“I’m asking you.”

 

“Maybe he wants to get Louis into trouble,” Harry says. “Like I said: They’ve been at it with each other since before I got here.”

 

“I’m not sure you grasp the seriousness of this discussion,” the Warden tells him instead of answering, in a tone that sends curious fingers of anxiety up Harry’s spine.

 

“I do,” Harry hastens to reassure him. “I just don’t know what you’re after.”

 

The Warden regards him with sharp, cold eyes. “Did Louis Tomlinson assault Raymond Randall on the twenty-fourth of August?”

 

“Not that I saw,” Harry replies firmly, and it is not a lie, because he was lying face-down with a concussion at the time it happened. “You can give me a lie detector test and ask me the same question.” He’s mostly calling the Warden’s bluff on that one; Harry has no idea if his little loophole truth will count as a real truth.

 

The Warden watches him for a long moment longer. Then he says: “I am interested in opening up an inquiry into the death of Raymond Randall.”

 

Harry simply looks at him.

 

“Those who cooperate will be rewarded,” the Warden says, tapping his fingers idly against the surface of the desk. “And evidently I control every second of your lives, so those who don’t will most definitely lose… privileges.” He turns away from Harry, the conversation over. “You can go.”

 

\--

 

Harry needs a smoke immediately when he reaches the yard, and he wonders when this became a habit he no longer wants to kick.

 

“I gather you had a warm and fuzzy chat with our good friend the Warden,” Louis says, and Harry doesn’t fail to notice the way Louis is leaning against the wall far enough away from the rest of their usual crew that he can’t be easily overheard.

 

“I did,” Harry replies. His mouth curls up on one side. “Do I look anxious? I thought he and the Deputy were going to play good-cop-bad-cop but it was basically an entire helping of bad cop.”

 

“Yeah, he wasn’t exactly subtle,” Louis agrees. “Did he tell you he’s going to launch an inquiry?”

 

“He did, yeah.” Harry is watching Louis, who has all of his usual swagger except for the part where he only fleetingly makes eye contact with Harry. “They need proof, don’t they?”

 

Louis laughs, but there’s not much humour in it. “Do you think I’ll get a fair trial in here?”

 

“Do you want one?” Harry asks pointedly.

 

Louis smirks, and it’s not a real smile but Harry will take it. “Are you saying I’m guilty, Harry Styles?”

 

Harry gives him a deceptively innocent smile.  “None of us are guilty in here, remember?”

 

Later on, Harry will send letter that he doesn’t tell Louis about; it won’t have an address on the outside, but Jerell will know where it’s supposed to go. This conversation, and the one with the Warden, decides him on the matter; it has to be done. For now, though, Harry lounges against the wall next to Louis in the sunshine, avoiding the inquiry-shaped elephant in the room until it’s time to go inside.

 

\--

 

The next two weeks are some of the most eventful that Harry has had in prison. Two days after his sit-down with Harry and Louis, the Warden announces that he’s launching an inquiry into the death of Raymond Randall. Before the week is out, Josh and Louis have been in a fight each; nothing serious, and the usual hotheads are involved, but Harry knows that the other inmates are circling now, testing them, and finding a certain  _schadenfreude_  in Louis’ situation. He can tell by the way the inmates watch them – Louis, Josh, Nick, Harry, and the others – like beasts hiding in the trees, waiting.

 

And of course, twelve days after his letter went out, Harry receives his reply.

 

He doesn’t wait. That afternoon, he thrusts it into Louis’ hands once they’re out in the yard.

 

“What is this?” Louis asks.

 

“Read it, genius,” Harry replies.

 

Louis does, eyes skimming the paper, and he doesn’t react much. When he’s finished, he folds the paper in two and flicks open his lighter, setting the letter ablaze. It falls to the ground, curling in on itself.

 

“This is dangerous,” Louis says.

 

“I know,” Harry replies.

 

Louis mulls it over, smoking and looking off into the middle distance.

 

“The inquiry means there’s a risk I’ll do a lifer. Doing this... it's an even bigger risk.”

 

“Yeah,” Harry shrugs, “but. If the inquiry finds you innocent, you’ll still be in prison. If we do this, and we succeed, you’ll be free.”

 

“As will you.” Louis’ eyes flick over to him, assessing him, and for a moment it feels like a lot of their camaraderie from the last couple of months has abruptly vanished. “You shouldn’t trust people so easily, Harry.”

 

“You saved my life,” Harry points out. “Twice.” He’s easy with this; comfortable. Louis is the one unprepared to be trusted, as though he is accustomed to playing the dishonest one in his relationships. Harry’s not sure if Louis isn’t just good at choosing people who are loyal and easily betrayed. Harry could be easily betrayed at this point; he knows that. But he doesn’t think Louis would do that.

 

Louis rubs the scar on his face, like the thought of its origin reminds him. “Why are you risking this?” He asks.

 

_For you_ , Harry wants to say, but it’s only half the truth, and it’s the half he’s not sure he’s ready to share. The other half is easier, and to be honest, Harry’s not sure why Louis has never asked what he’s in for. “I’m less than a year into a life sentence. Wouldn’t you?”

 

Louis’ eyebrows rise. “Life,” he repeats.

 

“Yeah.” Harry tosses his cigarette butt. “You did what you did in the bakery to help me, didn’t you? And you might get a life sentence for it. Well, I did what I did to help someone, too. And here I am.”

 

Louis looks at Harry for a long moment. “There are no fair trials,” he says at last.

 

“None.” Harry’s eyes are a sharp, turbulent green, and Louis can see that restlessness that never goes away, written in all the angles of his face. “So I wouldn’t count on that inquiry coming out in your favour. I’d count on something real.”

 

Louis looks around at the high walls, the barbed wire and the guard towers that pen them in. They are as real as anything he’s ever known. And yet Harry is real too, in a way that Louis hasn’t bothered to let anyone be in a long time. So he simply nods and says, “Lead on, Harry Styles.”

 

And when he tucks an arm around Harry, the camaraderie is back, like it was never gone.

 

\--

 

Planning a prison break isn’t as hard as it sounds. The key ingredient, Harry knows, is balls. The walls of the prison aren’t just walls; they’re conditioning tools that let you know how separate you’ll stay from the rest of society until society is ready to see you again. Harry looks up at them in the yard, and smokes, and thinks to himself, _they’re just walls_. He thinks it over and over again, _dreams_ it, even, until he half-believes it’s true.

 

Time is of the essence, too. The Warden’s inquiry is moving slowly but inexorably forward, and while Harry knows that it doesn’t matter if Louis’ got three years to go or thirty-three when they finally break out, he also knows how likely it is that Louis will disappear for weeks for the trial and then find himself transferred somewhere new, somewhere where he’ll have to start at the bottom of the ladder again.

 

And Harry will be here, trapped behind different walls.

 

So he sits on his own and starts to keep track of which guards work when, when the shift changes happen and which ones are sociable with the inmates. Harry’s still friendly with the kitchen staff, and when he talks to them, he throws in the odd innocent question about this or that to see what more he can scrounge up about the corrections officers. Harry knows that prison escapes aren’t usually bloodless, and they don’t happen because things are perfect. They happen because a guard stops paying attention and there’s an opportunity, and they happen because inmates like Harry are too clever by half and are dead-set on taking advantage of a system that cannot be perfect. 

 

In the bakery, he volunteers to unload the delivery trucks every week, and because he's got a reputation for trustworthiness at this point, he's given the job. There are always two guards on duty on the ground, but Harry notices that if the truck were to pull up close to the wall, in that corner just beyond the bakery, it would be difficult or impossible for those in the guard tower to keep an eye on it.

 

Three weeks later, Louis takes up the task of bringing the empty crates and boxes to the deliveries door to be put back on the truck and carted away. Initially, the guards watch him like a hawk – Louis drops a hint to Jerell that he wants a weapon, just to throw dust in the air, and somehow it gets back to the guards, like he’d known it would – but when it becomes clear that all Louis does is stack crates outside the door and vanish back inside with less than a disinterested glance at the truck, they relax.

 

Harry lets himself relax into this rhythm of things, but he’s watching all the time. After the first letter from Niall – the one Louis burned, the one that said, unequivocally, _this can be done_ – Harry regularly receives post. Usually it’s adult magazines that the guards immediately confiscate, but in between he gets cheerful letters with perhaps one or two lines of relevance in them. Niall is good at the whole subterfuge thing, which is surprising to Harry because he’s a terrible poker player.

 

One morning in late spring, Harry realizes as he’s working in the bakery that he knows this prison and its routines and schedules like the back of his hand. It comes to him as he’s carrying sacks of flour nearly half his weight – there’s no need to do any more surreptitious surveillance, send anymore quasi-bullshit letters to Niall with questions he doesn’t know the answer to. He’s ready. The planning phase is over. It’s time to act, and Harry doesn’t know why he’s been putting it off except that it all comes down to balls, and once he commits, there’s no going back.

 

He finds Louis on the way back from the showers that night, hustling him into the corridor that leads to the laundry rooms. They have a handful of minutes, maybe, before someone realizes that they aren’t where they’re supposed to be and comes looking. They might even get a grace period, because Harry makes eye contact with Josh and the latter nods a little, like he knows to buy time.

 

“This is romantic,” Louis remarks.

 

“Next Friday,” Harry says simply, ignoring him. Friday is delivery day.

 

Louis’ smirk vanishes at once. “Harry,” he says very carefully, eyes flicking to the end of the hallway to double-check that they’re alone. “Are we ready for this?”

 

Harry is already nodding, so confident in his plan now that he’s done the decisive thing and set it in motion. “We’re ready. I’ll tell you how it’s going to go, this week in the yard. You already know the big picture, but there are details – and I need to confirm with Niall.”

 

Louis makes even, direct eye contact for a long moment. “Are you sure?”

 

And Harry knows that Louis isn’t asking if he’s sure that there are details or if he’s sure this is going to work. Louis is asking whether Harry wants to do this, because it’s a risk that they’ll be caught or killed, and neither are fun and exciting alternatives.

 

“Positive,” Harry replies firmly.

 

Louis reaches for Harry, settles a hand on the back of his neck as is his wont, and doesn’t let Harry out from under the microscope. Harry tries not to think too hard about the way the gesture feels – has always felt – _possessive_ , because it’s just something that Louis does and now isn’t the time to be over-analyzing.

 

“Harry, I want the truth now,” Louis says, and Harry doesn’t know how he knows, but he anticipates what comes next: “What did you do to get life in prison?”

 

And Harry, who has never told this story to anyone, spills it like it’s meaningless because maybe it’s become that way. After hearing about it day in and day out at the trial and then being sent to a place where it’s easy to forget what it’s like to even have a family, Harry’s learned to bury all of this. “I found out that my step-father used to beat my mother,” he explains. “I bought a gun from someone I met on the internet and killed him while he was reading the newspaper.”

 

Louis doesn’t flinch. "You never told me."

 

Harry shrugs. "You didn't ask."

 

“And your mum?”

 

“Doesn’t speak to me,” Harry says. There is an impressive amount of _nothing_ in his voice. “And she won’t. She loved him.”

 

Louis whistles softly. “While he was reading the morning paper. You’re cold-blooded, Harry Styles.”

 

Harry shrugs. “I meant to scare him, I think. And then when I was standing behind him with the gun in my hand, it felt like someone else was doing it and I just pulled the hammer back and finished him.”

 

Louis pulls Harry slightly closer, never taking his hand off his neck, and for a moment he doesn’t say anything, fingers tangling in Harry’s curls.

 

Then, abruptly, he lets go and slips away.

 

“That’s it, then,” Harry says, not sure if he’s disappointed by the response. What did he want? Not pity. Louis to tell him that he was in the right? Why did he ask, if not to acquire some new level of insight, to understand why Harry's doing what he's doing and risking what he's risking?

 

It turns out that Harry's not reading this as well as he'd like, because Louis spins a one-eighty, curls his fingers into the front of Harry’s shirt, and thrusts him against the wall. Harry, who was not expecting it, has the wind knocked out of him. There’s no time to recover before Louis’ mouth slams into his, hungry and too hot. Harry opens his mouth to _breathe_ and Louis takes the opportunity to deepen the kiss, licking into Harry’s mouth until Harry’s hands find the back of Louis’ head, trying to jerk him closer –

 

And as soon as Harry takes control, Louis is done, releasing him and stepping back, an expression Harry can’t read in his eyes.

 

“The argument can be made that you shouldn’t have shot your stepdad,” Louis says, not breathless at all; flawlessly cool. “But the gall of your _mum_ is what makes me sick.”

 

Harry can only goggle at him.

 

Louis steps in again and runs a thumb along Harry’s jawline. “When you put it all on the line for me, I’ll owe you more than you know. I’m not going to walk away from what you did for _me_ , Curly.”

 

When Harry blinks, he’s alone in the hallway again, and Louis’ footsteps are fading away.


	4. This Town's Too Small (For Me to Stay)

Friday morning dawns bright and unseasonably cold. From the moment he wakes up, Harry tries not to think,  _last time I’ll see these four walls; last time I’ll put on an orange jumpsuit; last breakfast I’ll eat on someone else’s schedule_. He’s not overly superstitious or anything, but he  _will not_  jinx this. Besides, he doesn’t want it to show on his face; doesn’t want anyone to look at him and  _know_. If this plan fails, it won’t be because Harry hasn’t dedicated himself to it, burying the secret under his heart where no one can find it.

 

Louis sits across from him at breakfast and sees right through him.

 

Louis knows, of course, what’s going down today. Harry has been explaining it to him increments over the course of the week, telling him bits and pieces in the yard, on the way back from the showers, and in the morning on their way to the bakery. If one or two people have had the chance to overhear, they won’t have overheard enough to stop them, because Harry’s been very careful.

 

But Louis sees the way the anxiousness manifests in little ways, in half-aborted gestures and curt laughs, and they’re on their way out of the cafeteria when Harry feels a hand settle lightly against his back. He glances over his shoulder, and Louis just flashes him that strange, crooked smile, no thrum of nervousness under his skin at all. He is simply himself. Harry feels himself relax, very slightly.

 

Louis hasn’t kissed him again, and Harry doesn’t bring it up, because he doesn’t know what it meant.  _I won’t walk away._  Was it a promise, then, a handshake in the best, most manipulative way Louis knows how? Or is there something more to it than that? Harry doesn’t really have time to think about it because he wants to spend every waking minute looking for flaws in the plan, but he thinks about it anyway; of Louis’ hand curled into his shirt, knuckles brushing Harry’s throat, and the heat of his mouth.

 

The hand on his back makes those thousands of tiny imprints pass through Harry’s mind’s eye again, but he shuts them down.  _Not today_.

 

And then the hand is gone, and Harry goes to work.

 

The first part of his morning passes the way it has since Harry got here. There’s something soothing about making bread that slows the racing of his heart and always has. It gives him something tangible to set his mind to, and maybe it reminds Harry of how much he liked to cook, on the outside. He’d like to cook for Louis, if he’d let him, even though he knows Louis would tease him mercilessly about it and not help whatsoever with the washing up after.

 

Which is a thought so domestic it almost hurts. Harry doesn’t even know where it came from, because though he’s always been the white-picket-fence type, he’s not sure his ten-year-old self would have approved of doing that while on the lam with another convict. It’s not the stuff epic romances are made of, certainly. Louis with his tattoos and that scar down his face and that  _recklessness_  under his skin – Louis can’t be the kind of thing you pin  _forever_  on. He’s not cut out for that any more than Harry is cut out for prison. Maybe it’s okay to think of best-case scenarios, though, because this could very well go sideways unless things to go precisely according to plan.

 

They should, but no system is perfect.

 

When the bread is baking, Harry drags his hair out of his eyes and checks the time. 11:07. The delivery truck comes at 11:30, maybe a little bit earlier. He occupies himself, keeping an eye on the clock, and when it’s five minutes before, he makes his way to the delivery bay.

 

Calling it a delivery bay is generous. It’s a set of double doors through which trolleys can be pushed loaded with supplies, but the space inside is cramped and leaks when it rains, so generally Harry unloads their weekly supplies into the bay and then, once the truck is gone, moves all of the boxes further inside.

 

He idly wonders how long it will take someone to notice when the boxes are left in the bay, still packed.

 

Harry waits for one of the guards – Geoffrey, who has no wife or children and wants to be a police officer but never gets around to it – unlocks the doors from the outside. Harry props the doors open and says a friendly “Good morning”, because he’s been easy to get along with since day one and he doesn’t see why today should be an exception. Geoffrey merely grunts at him.

 

The delivery truck arrives on time, and Harry doesn’t recognize the driver but at this point he is operating on trust. Niall had said he would come through, and he will. That’s the only option.

 

The driver pulls up close to the wall, much closer than usual, and Geoffrey’s companion, a guard called Bushwick with a birthmark down the side of his face, frowns and approaches the driver’s side window. They have a quick, curt discussion, and Harry gets the impression from the way the driver dismissively waves a hand and starts toward the back of the truck that he’s refusing to move it simply because it would be a waste of time and he’s got other deliveries to do. The man is tall and wiry, and Harry doesn’t recognize him, but he knows they’re in business when the man throws a seemingly random nod at him and says, “All right?”

 

Harry doesn’t let himself smile.

 

He hears a sound behind him, and turns to see Louis approaching, arms straining under the weight of half a dozen empty wooden crates.

 

“Harry,” Louis says with a nod, and Harry nods back. Louis leaves the stack next to the door and vanishes again to get more.

 

“Here to work or sunbathe, Styles?” Bushwick calls, and Harry approaches the delivery truck with a smile.

 

“Sunbathe, but I think I got my destinations crossed.” Harry pulls himself up into the back of the truck. “I thought there’d be a bit more lounging around in prison, frankly.”

 

He busies himself removing boxes and passing them to the driver, who sets them on the ground. The usual driver generally brings someone to help unload; this time, there is indeed a second fellow sitting in the passenger seat, but he is engrossed in a magazine and doesn’t appear particularly inclined to help out.

 

“Tomlinson,” Geoffrey says, the next time Louis appears with a stack of empty crates. “Come over here and do this first, yeah?”

 

Louis shrugs and approaches, picking up the boxes that the driver sets down and carting them inside. They’ve emptied the truck and begun stacking the old crates inside it when Harry follows Louis to collect some of the ones that were left in the delivery bay when Louis wasn’t given the opportunity to finish his task.

 

“All right?” Harry asks once they're alone, echoing the truck driver, and Louis hits him.

 

Harry wasn’t expecting the explosion of stars behind his eyes, and he knows, because they planned this, that Louis doesn’t even mean to hit him that hard. Still, it’s a blow, and Harry reels for a moment before he regains some coherent train of thought and grabs Louis’ jumpsuit, shoving him hard. Louis stumbles and catches his heel on one of the crates; it sends him sprawling, and Harry is on him in a second.

 

“What’s going on in there?” Geoffrey calls, and Harry thinks, with his knees on either side of Louis’ hips,  _come and see_. He splits Louis’ eyebrows without meaning to, and Louis looks startled before he grabs a fistful of Harry’s hair and smashes him sideways, sending him rolling.

 

“Oi – break it up!”

 

That’s Bushwick, Geoffrey hot on his heels, and Harry lets them converge on Louis, confused, before he rolls to his feet and drives his elbow into Bushwick’s temple. When Harry sees Geoffrey move out of the corner of his eye, he whirls around, but the guard is mid-slump, and Louis is struggling out from under him.

 

Someone wraps iron fingers around Harry’s upper arm, and Harry deliberately throws himself down, unbalancing the both of them. Bushwick looks disoriented, but he’s on his elbows and knees, one hand still wrapped around Harry’s arm before Harry wrenches free and stomps a foot into the side of his head. Bushwick stops moving at once.

 

“Should’ve come prepared,” Louis says, and he’s standing next to Harry, running his tongue over his bottom lip, hefting – what else? – a rolling pin in his hand.

 

“I’ve never done that to anyone before,” Harry says, feeling a little ill, but Louis cups that familiar hand over the back of his neck.

 

“He’s not dead. He’s unconscious, and he’ll be right as rain, though undoubtedly a little embarrassed that he’s so utterly terrible at this job.”

 

Harry glances over Louis’ shoulder, unconvinced. “And Geoffrey?”

 

Louis shrugs. “He’ll live.”

 

“Louis – ”

 

“If you were going to have a weak stomach about this, you should’ve mentioned it earlier,” Louis tells him firmly. Then he relents a little and smiles, giving Harry a tiny shake. “You didn’t kill anyone. You will, however, have to strip Bushwick because I very much call dibs on Geoffrey.”

 

Harry makes a face. “He’s hairy.”

 

“So are you,” Louis says. “Lovely pun fully intended.”

 

It’s so terrible that Harry has to fight a grin, despite the nature of their situation. Louis claps him on the shoulder and sets to work at once, shimmying out of his jumpsuit and dragging on the guard’s uniform. They won’t stand up to inspection, of course – every guard in the prison knows who the other guards are, at least on sight – but from far away, they won’t raise as many questions as they would in orange jumpsuits, and that will have to be enough.

 

They’re dressed lightning-quick, and Harry can feel his heart pounding in his ears as they stuff the unconscious guards and their prison-issue clothes behind a stack of crates.

 

Very, very briefly, he reaches out and catches Louis’ hand. Louis squeezes Harry’s back without even looking down, and then lets go when they walk out into the sunlight. Harry waits to see if anyone in the guard tower will notice that something is not right, but he wasn’t wrong before: From far off, the uniforms place them outside of the realm of suspicion.

 

The driver is puttering around the truck, making it look like nothing is amiss, but when he sees them, he immediately returns to the cab. Harry and Louis clamber into the back of the truck, pulling the door shut even as the driver starts up the engine. Cramming himself in behind the crates, closest to the wall and furthest from the door as he frantically stacks crates back in front of himself, Harry feels the truck shift gears and start off across the compound. His heart is still hammering in his chest, and he searches for Louis but doesn’t see him amongst the tightly-packed columns of empty boxes. It’s probably for the best; if Harry can’t spot him though he knows he’s here, anyone doing a quick sweep won’t find him either.

 

The truck slows down when they approach the gates, and comes to a stop. It idles for several long, long minutes, and Harry feels a bead of sweat trickle down his temple. The driver is talking to someone – an officer, probably – but the cab is on the other side of some kind of barrier, and Harry can’t hear what he’s saying.

 

There’s a silence.

 

The back of the truck slides open, and sunlight floods into the dark compartment. Harry squeezes his eyes shut and feels _exposed_ , trying not to breathe, as though if he stays silent enough, the guard who is inevitably coming in to search the truck won’t see him.

 

“Told you I search it before I go,” the driver is saying. “You lads never used to search the back but the past few weeks, it’s been every fucking time.”

 

“Standard procedure,” the guard tells him, sounding bored.

 

“I don’t give a fuck, mate, I really don’t,” the driver says, and Harry abruptly realizes that it’s not the driver at all. Despite the broad Yorkshire accent that Harry doesn’t recognize, the voice is very familiar. It must be the bloke in the passenger seat, and Harry thinks back to the adult mag the guy had been flipping through and, in spite of himself, has to smile.

 

How is Niall so good at subterfuge when he’s so very,  _very_  bad at poker?

 

“What do you think, I’ve got a bunch of blokes hanging dodgily around in back of the crates?” Harry can almost  _hear_  Niall throw up his hands. “There  _is_  no behind the crates. We helped pack this truck ourselves; these babies go all the way to the back.”

 

“I’m just doing my job,” the guard says, but he seems to be inspecting the seemingly unbroken wall of crates and wondering if it’s worth it to dismantle it all.

 

“I know that. I know,” Niall says, and he sounds conciliatory now. “But I’ve got another delivery at half one and every time I’m late, they take it out of the cheque. Bloody unions aren’t worth shit nowadays.”

 

There’s a silence. Then the door slides closed again, even as the guard begins to reply. After that, their voices are muffled.

 

“I may have pissed myself,” comes a whisper from somewhere off to Harry’s right.

 

Harry allows himself to grin in the dark. “Doubt it matters, unless you're of a mind to mail Geoffrey back his trousers.”

 

It feels like a long time before the truck starts up again, and there’s a distant buzz as the gates open to allow them through. Harry holds his breath until everything has been quiet for a long time.

 

\--

 

The next time light floods into the compartment, it’s an Irish accent that greets them.

 

“All right, lads, out you get.”

 

Harry wriggles until he can properly move and begins to carefully re-stack the crates that have been joggled by the bouncing of the truck. By the time he can see Niall, Louis is nearly free, too.

 

“Aren’t you two a sight for sore eyes,” Niall crows, squinting in the sunlight as he grins at them.

 

“Speaking of sights for sore eyes,” Louis comments, dropping to the ground and wrapping Niall in a hug.

 

Niall flushes red and laughs. “You owe me, you know.”

 

“Niall wants hugging,” Louis informs Harry gravely over Niall’s shoulder.

 

“ _Does_  he?” Harry asks, biting back a grin, and Niall makes a half-hearted effort to wriggle himself free when Harry stretches his arms around both of them and rests his cheek against Niall’s shoulder from behind.

 

“Do you want to harass me all day or get into the getaway car before they come looking for this truck?” Niall asks, but he doesn’t sound as annoyed as he clearly means to.

 

“Harass you, clearly,” Louis replies, “but I suppose there’s a case to be made for the getaway car option.”

 

Niall hustles them over to a beat-up silver Civic parked in a meandering dirt laneway that doesn’t seem to lead anywhere. Behind them, the truck roars to life and disappears over the hill as the three of them congregate around the car.

 

“I’m going to drive,” Niall says.

 

“Box you for it,” Louis suggests.

 

Niall grins, which seems to Harry to be Niall’s standard reaction to most things, and ignores him. “If they discover you’re loose before it’s convenient, we may come to a police checkpoint. You, Harry, are going to tuck your hair up under this hat and put this on.”

 

Niall rummages in the scatter of debris in the back seat of the car and tosses Harry a snapback and a t-shirt. Harry shakes it out and eyes the Adidas logo. “I don’t want to be a chav.”

 

Niall sets a pair of giant headphones around his neck. “You’re sixteen years old, you  _love_  being a chav.”

 

“I’m not – ” Harry begins, but Niall has already turned to Louis.

 

“Sorry, mate, it’s the boot for you,” Niall says, eyeing him critically. “I brought clothes for you but I can’t hide that scar.”

 

Louis rubs his face, like he’s forgotten that he has it. “No, right, that makes sense.”

 

“It’s not a proper getaway until there are disguises and people riding in boots,” Harry says, grinning as he tugs the t-shirt over his head.

 

“That’s the spirit.” Niall gets behind the wheel, and Louis climbs into the boot. Harry comes around to shut him in.

 

“Bit smaller than my last place,” Louis remarks, shifting about to see if there’s a comfortable way to fit. There is not, as it turns out.

 

“Could be worse,” Harry says, lifting one shoulder in a shrug.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Yeah. Could be me in there.” Harry flashes a smirk before he closes the trunk.

 

Louis grumbles about punk-ass kids who think they can just snark at him and get away with it before he takes it upon himself to roll over and have a nap.

 

\--

  

“You pour beer like an asshole,” Louis informs Niall. “Call yourself an Irishman.”

 

“Guinness is supposed to have head,” Niall replies, swatting at him.

 

Louis evades it easily and knocks his glass against Harry’s.

 

“Are we toasting to beer?” Harry asks, his nose practically touching the foam as he inhales the smell with an expression that borders on orgasmic.

 

“Can you toast to beer with beer?” Louis asks.

 

“Toast paradox,” Niall says.

 

Harry is too busy draining his pint to argue toast etiquette.

 

They’ve been out of prison for two days, and by now, the police investigation is fully underway. Niall doesn’t think it’s safe for them to go anywhere at this point, so he’s brought them here, to the upper floor of the home from which he runs much of his operation. They’ll stay here until it’s safe to get out of town, and in the meantime, Niall asks them what their plan is from here on out and they both just shake their heads, not having thought of it, so Niall hiffs a pen and paper at them and tells them to come up with a game plan.

 

“I meant to tell you,” Niall begins, patting his pockets like he’s looking for something. Something occurs to him, and he rummages under his jacket, which is carelessly thrown over a chair in the corner.

 

He slaps a newspaper down in front of them. “Front page news.”

 

Harry and Louis lean over the twin mug shots at the same time. Up until now, the police had not released images to the public.

 

“You look a bit simple,” Harry tells Louis.

 

“You look a bit like Sideshow Bob,” Louis replies.

 

They both grin, even as they pore over the article.

 

“This is flattering.” Harry points at the newsprint. “Look. The Metro Police have made us their highest priority.”

 

“We really should go on a bit of a crime binge,” Louis says. “You need to make the most of your time in the law enforcement spotlight.”

 

“That’s the only thing that makes sense,” Harry agrees solemnly.

 

"D'you want to be Bonnie, or Clyde?" Louis asks.

 

"Spoiler alert," Niall says mildly: "Bonnie and Clyde both come down with an unfortunate case of the very-deads at the end."

 

Later, after Niall excuses himself to do some work – he doesn’t specify what, but he takes a curt phone call during which the only thing he says is, “Keep him on ice for me, I’ll come ‘round” – Harry flops on his back on the couch, head in Louis’ lap, and looks up at the ceiling that is marvellous because it is not just another six feet of concrete between him and freedom.  


“We ought to come up with that plan of Niall’s,” Louis says, his fingers carded through Harry’s curls.

 

Harry turns his face into Louis’ stomach. “I’m tired of planning,” he mumbles, because he is; he wants to lay on his back and let Louis stroke his hair and bask in his hard-won freedom because he’s been putting himself through the ringer for this for weeks. He badly needs a break. Harry feels sixteen again, under pressure about his grades and his friends and his hobbies from his parents and teachers, and maybe it's making him regress just a little.

 

“I know,” Louis replies soothingly. “But we can’t live here forever.”

 

“Why not?” Harry asks, and it’s probably petulant but he’s in the mood.

 

“We didn’t escape from a locked cell so that we could stay cooped up in a locked house,” Louis points out. “We’ve got to get some semblance of a life back.”

 

“I want to decorate an apartment and cook things that I like inside it and be friendly with the neighbours,” Harry says moodily, still speaking into Louis’ stomach.

 

“That’s good, because I don’t want to do any of those things,” Louis replies, mildly amused. “We’re a matched pair.”

 

Harry rolls his head back and looks up at Louis. “We’re going together, then?”

 

Louis raises an eyebrow. “Really, Harry Styles?”

 

Harry blinks. He had not known that this was a foregone conclusion. 

 

"Are we going to get an apartment?" He asks.

 

"I do prefer that to homelessness, yes," Louis says dryly.

 

"Are we going to be nice to the neighbours?"

 

"Sickeningly nice."

 

Harry rolls his face back into Louis' stomach, not sure what emotion he most needs to hide. "Okay then."

 

He feels, rather than hears, Louis laughing softly at him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter... will feature some Ziam! Detective Payne is on the job, everybody. Who's excited.


	5. Daddy Was a Cop (on the East Side of Chicago)

It’s chilly out tonight, despite the fact that they’re moving into late spring. Liam leans against the railing on the balcony outside the bedroom and watches the streetlights flicker on one by one, reluctant to go inside despite the way the wind blows through his t-shirt.

 

He doesn’t even hear Zayn come up behind him, so caught up is he in his thoughts, and he starts slightly and looks down when Zayn’s hand curls over his hip.

 

“I haven’t seen you in a t-shirt in a while,” Zayn muses, fingers ducking up under the hem to dance lightly over the skin underneath.

 

“I needed to get out of the shirt and tie,” Liam explains. “It was suffocating.”

 

He’s always like this after a day in the media spotlight; tense, and reluctant to be touched, at least at first. It’s the part of the job he likes least, explaining a frustratingly slow investigation to a hungry crowd of reporters, even if it’s not him who has to do most of the explaining. He would hate to be promoted to lieutenant and have to deal with the politics of the job like that all the time. It’s too bad, because Zayn doesn’t think there’s a more honest cop anywhere, not with the work ethic Liam has.

 

“Yeah?” Zayn slides his other arm around him, resting his chin on Liam’s shoulder. The hand that snuck up under Liam’s t-shirt is tracing slow circles at the base of his rib cage now, fingers ghosting along bare skin. Zayn is nothing if not persistent. “Well, I like it.”

 

Liam shuts his eyes, his fingers loosening their iron grip on the railing. “This morning you said you liked a man in a suit.”

 

“This morning, you were wearing a suit,” Zayn points out. “And I liked it very much. Now you’re wearing a t-shirt. It reminds me of the days when you used to come home in blue.” He noses under Liam’s ear, his breath warm against Liam’s neck: “My very own man in a uniform. Then you made detective and spoiled my fun.”

 

“I’m awfully sorry my getting promoted was hard on you,” Liam says dryly, but he’s back from that place he goes inside his head now; some of the anxiety is gone from his tone. Zayn, who knows when he’s won, sucks a kiss into that sensitive spot just under Liam’s ear in response. Liam inhales, leaning back into him, and Zayn smiles into his skin.

 

“You can make it up to me,” he suggests.

 

“What did you have in mind?”

 

Zayn leaves another kiss under the first one, then a second, in a trail leading down to the collar of Liam’s t-shirt. “I have a few ideas,” he says softly. “They all involve letting me take care of you. For once.”

 

“I let you take care of me,” Liam protests weakly, even as some of the tension drains out of him and his shoulders relax.

 

God, there’s nothing that amazes or terrifies Zayn more than the fact that the sound of his voice is the only thing that can make that happen.

 

“Come inside, lovely,” he murmurs. He doesn’t take his hands off Liam’s body even as he gently turns him around and guides him back into the house.

 

Liam completely lets him.

 

\--

 

“The question is, do we think they’ve left the city?”

 

Liam is already shaking his head before the question is even all the way out of his partner’s mouth. “No. No, they’ll have gone to ground. They’ll wait for the search to die down before they risk moving in the open.”

 

Eleanor leans against the desk and surveys him, all business in a gray pantsuit and stylish pumps. “Is that a hickey I see, Detective Payne?”

 

Liam looks confused, then flushed and a little annoyed as his hand flies up self-consciously to his neck. “I don’t think that’s part of the investigation.”

 

Eleanor hides a smile. “It’s good that you’re finding a way to work out some of that stress, is all. Yesterday I was worried you were going to fling yourself off a building.”

 

“I have a fairly keen sense of self-preservation,” Liam says wryly. “I might fling a _reporter_ off a building.”

 

Eleanor snorts. “You should. I think they give out medals for that sort of thing.”

 

Liam’s smile fades as he taps the map in front of them. There are push-pins everywhere that Harry Styles or Louis Tomlinson have been spotted; green for Harry, yellow for Louis, although most of the time they are spotted together. There are a discouragingly low number of them.

 

“The thing that doesn’t make sense to me in this picture is who they know in the city who could be sheltering them. Neither of them have family here. Tomlinson has friends everywhere, but I don’t know if they’re the kind who would actively risk arrest and prosecution for the purposes of keeping him out of prison.”

 

Eleanor gazes down at the map, apparently thinking. “You know a lot about Tomlinson,” she says after a while, thoughtfully.

 

Liam doesn’t reply to that, because he ought to know a lot about Louis; they were best friends growing up. He hasn’t mentioned that to Eleanor yet, despite the fact that she’ll murder him for keeping that from her when she finds out.

 

“I’m just getting better at reading criminals,” Liam says ruefully. “Can’t decide if that’s a good thing.”

 

“Are you kidding? That’s a great thing.” Eleanor nudges his hip to move him over. “This pin – that’s the gas station on Yale, right? When I was in vice, we busted some guys down that way for small-time narcotics.” She drums her fingers on the map, thinking. “If we can draft ourselves an unofficial list of Tomlinson’s contacts, inside and outside the pen, we can cross-check those with the owners and employees of businesses and gas stations they’ve visited.”

 

“I’d thought of that,” Liam admits. He’s been kind of hoping that it wouldn’t come to that, that someone would spot Harry Styles or Louis Tomlinson or both and call the police while he was busy being served up to the press on a silver platter yesterday for the express purpose of drumming up publicity for the case and putting a visible face to the investigation. Some of Louis’ contacts are bound to be people who know Liam from back in the neighbourhood, and that’s going to raise all kinds of questions.

 

“Tomlinson’s an idiot if he draws obvious connections like that, but it’s worth a check,” he says. “There may be someone he doesn’t think we’ll find out about. And we should probably look into Styles’ background, too.”

 

Eleanor catches her lower lip between her teeth, considering it. “I’m less convinced that Styles knows people in the business. Before the rap that put him in prison, he was squeaky clean.”

 

“That doesn’t mean he wasn’t up to no good,” Liam points out. “It just means that we didn’t catch him.”

 

“True,” Eleanor concedes. “Which might make him smarter than Tomlinson.”

 

“Or just more cautious.” Liam shrugs. “Louis Tomlinson gets caught every time he throws caution to the wind and tries to do too much, too soon.”

 

“Well, we can use that,” Eleanor says. “Maybe he’ll get sick of waiting around and do something careless.”

 

Knowing Louis, Liam doesn’t think that’s at all unlikely, but he wouldn’t term it carelessness so much as recklessness.

 

“In the mean time, we’ll keep trying to flush him out,” Liam agrees. “And maybe we can use the fact that Styles isn’t a career criminal to our advantage.”

 

“Yeah.” Eleanor is nodding. “Yeah, absolutely. He’s never escaped from prison before, he’s never been the subject of a manhunt before – ”

 

“Right, yeah, he gave himself up the first time, didn’t he,” Liam remembers, and Eleanor nods again.

 

“The heat might get too much for him. If we can find out who they know and get the word out that we’ll go easy on Styles in exchange for serving up Tomlinson, we might be able to draw him in.”

 

Liam remembers the Louis he knew in high school, the one who knocked a kid’s teeth out for calling out  _go home, faggot_  at Liam in the cafeteria. He’d made it a point to sling an arm over Liam’s shoulders on the way out, despite the looks they were getting.  _You might be a faggot, but you’re my faggot,_  Louis had said cheerfully, flipping the bird at the bully’s girlfriend when she began shrieking at them.  _You’re bigger than me, Li, and probably bigger than him. Don’t let him talk to you like that next time._

 

Point being, Louis is the type of guy who inspires loyalty in the chosen few he takes into his inner circle, simply because those chosen few are the ones he’ll risk anything for. Because of that, Liam sincerely doubts that Harry Styles is in any position to give Louis up. If they escaped from prison together, they’re in this together until the close. Louis wouldn’t have brought him otherwise.

 

“At the very least, he might make a mistake that Louis wouldn’t make,” Liam says at last. “We’ll just have to keep reminding the public to keep an eye out. People call in tips all the time.”

 

Eleanor nods and glances at her watch. “What do you think? Do we have time to head out to East Watch this morning?”

 

“Let’s leave it until after lunch,” Liam suggests. “I want to go over his rap sheet. We can start there, looking for possible accomplices, and work our way out.”

 

“Good call.” Eleanor pushes away from the table. “I’m going to get us an urn of coffee.”

 

Liam’s mouth flips up in one corner. “An urn?”

 

“Each,” she clarifies on her way out of the room.

 

\--

 

The gates buzz open to let them through as Eleanor makes small talk with the corrections officer standing by to inspect their badges. They called ahead, of course, but this is a maximum security prison that has had two people break out and remain at large in the past two weeks so they’re not taking any chances.

 

Liam looks up at the towering concrete walls and thinks about what might’ve been if he hadn’t been so focused on getting out of the neighbourhood he grew up in. Normally he doesn’t think like this, but the fact that it’s Louis they’re tracking down brings him way back.

 

“You good?” Eleanor asks, as the guard waves them through and they stroll up toward the main building, past fences topped with barbed wire.

 

“Yeah.” Liam knows that Eleanor comes from one of those Oxford-type families and that the fact that she’s a cop doesn’t sit well with them. He’s never been as forthcoming about growing up in a flat where the heating was routinely shut off because the bills for his prescription pain medication were his mother’s first priority. The only person he shares these things with is Zayn, because Zayn would never do Liam the discourtesy of feeling sorry for him.

 

“Well, get your head in the game,” Eleanor tells him. “These are hardened cons. We need to be sharp in there.”

 

Liam nods. “Strategy?”

 

“The usual,” Eleanor suggests. “Play them off against each other.”

 

“That’s going to be harder to do when they have nothing to gain by talking to us,” Liam points out.

 

“There’s always a con or two who wants to make friends with a cop,” Eleanor says, as they jog up the steps and she props open the door for him. “We just need to test the waters.”

 

The inside of the prison is dim after the sunny May afternoon outside. The Deputy Warden meets them just inside the doors and brings them to an interrogation room set up inside the reinforced perimeter of the inner prison. Liam shrugs out of his suit jacket as Eleanor checks the batteries on the tape recorder, and they settle in quickly. They sent over a list of inmates they need to speak to in advance, so the process gets underway without delay.

 

After the fourth unsuccessful round of questioning, Eleanor leans back in her chair and rubs her eyes. “Louis Tomlinson cannot have been friends with every single fucking person inside this facility,” she says. “ _Some_ one must hate him enough to talk.”

 

“Yeah, that’s some cult of personality he’s got going on in here,” Liam agrees. “Although it’s true that we’ve only spoken to people that we know are connected to him and Styles. And there’s also a possibility, however remote, that they masterminded the escape themselves and didn’t tell anyone else about it.”

 

Eleanor stands up, stretching out. She looks restless. “Should we get the Deputy Warden back in here? He might know someone that Tomlinson or Styles had a falling out with.”

 

“We’ve only got two to go,” Liam points out. “Let’s get them done and do that afterward.”

 

Eleanor drops back into her chair. “I swear to God, if one more convicted felon looks me in the face today and tells me that Louis Tomlinson is a  _swell_  guy but he doesn’t know a thing about his whereabouts, I’m going to snap and slap someone.”

 

“As long as you do it where it doesn’t leave a mark,” Liam answers. Eleanor rolls her eyes at him.

 

The next con who gets dragged in front of them has a hunted look about him, but Liam doesn’t trust it. This is the kind of guy who hangs around in dark corners, looking like a kicked puppy until an opportunity comes up to take advantage of someone. Liam can practically  _feel_  the predator coming off of this guy’s skin, like some kind of poison.

 

“Your name is Nigel Hatcher?” Eleanor asks, flipping idly through his file.

 

“Niall Horan,” the convict says, licking his lips, and Liam looks up, startled.

 

“Are you sure? Your file says Nigel Hatcher,” Eleanor says, puzzled.

 

“ _I’m_  Nigel Hatcher,” the convict snaps impatiently. “You need Niall Horan.”

 

“Why is that, exactly?” Liam asks, wondering where he’s heard that name before. It sounds very familiar.

 

“Pals, they are, Horan and Tomlinson.” Nigel licks his lips again. “Run him through your database. Niall Horan. You’ll see. He had something to do with it.”

 

Eleanor and Liam look at each other. “What makes you say that?” Eleanor asks carefully, because after a day of turning up nothing, this seems suspiciously easy.

 

“Run him through your database,” Nigel repeats. “I’m telling you. You’ll see. You’ll know. Run him through.”

 

Eleanor leans back in her seat and surveys Nigel for a long moment. Liam has to give the convict some credit for simply staring back at her; when Eleanor looks at  _him_  like that, Liam finds himself telling her everything from what he had for breakfast yesterday to the exact circumstances of the parking ticket he never paid last year. It’s not just because she’s attractive, although she is; Liam doesn’t go in for that, for obvious reasons (he’s got a whip-smart lawyer with model good looks waiting at home, thanks). It’s something about the way she just tilts her head and waits, leaving an expectant silence that the other person feels compelled to fill.

 

“All right,” Eleanor says at last. “Niall Horan. Can you spell that for me?”

 

Once he’s gone, she finishes scribbling down a note and turns to Liam. “What do you think?”

 

“I think we finish this last interview so that we don’t have to drive back out here,” Liam replies, “and then I think we find out who Niall Horan is.”

 

Eleanor nods. “Right you are. Is it just me, or does  _Niall Horan_  sound awfully familiar?”

 

\--

 

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Zayn leans forward, fork hovering, forgotten, over his dinner. “Niall Horan is involved?”

 

Liam shrugs. “It looks that way.”

 

“Damn.” Zayn sits back, shaking his head. “ _Niall Horan._  When I was putting together the case on him, I thought he’d rot in prison. How on earth is he out already?”

 

“People fall through cracks in the justice system all the time,” Liam replies, because he himself tried to follow that paper trail and came up with several dead ends. “I knew he sounded familiar. I’d forgotten that you worked on his case.”

 

“He’s no small time crook,” Zayn warns. “He’s been into everything you can name – narcotics, prostitution, weapons smuggling. Online fraud. Blackmail, conspiracy. The DA left him alone at first because we had bigger fish to fry; he wasn’t running drugs and he treated his hookers like human beings. That was a mistake, as it turns out, because he learned fast and now he’s expanding faster than we can keep up.”

 

Liam nods, swirling his water glass absently in one hand. “And you think he maintained his business while he was inside?”

 

“He’s well-liked on the street.” Zayn shrugs. “Charming. Tough, though; you have to be, to run the kind of piecemeal empire he’s behind. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a handful of blokes running it for him while he was gone. It also wouldn’t surprise me if they had something to do with why he’s out of prison so soon. Money talks, if you know who to strike up a conversation with, and he’s got more of it than he knows what to do with.”

 

Liam’s mouth twists into a half-smile. “Are you suggesting that the justice system is corrupt?”

 

“Never,” Zayn replies solemnly. “There are no crooked cops and not a single lawyer is in it for the money.”

 

“That’s reassuring.”

 

Zayn reaches across the table and folds a hand over Liam’s. “ _We’re_  not corrupt. That’s what matters.”

 

“Yeah.” Liam turns his hand over and catches Zayn’s, squeezing it. “One day you’ll be the DA and I’ll be the Chief of Police, and we’ll clean it up.”

 

Zayn chuckles. “Do not rope me into your suicide plans, please.”

 

\--

 

“So.” Eleanor surveys the room full of officers and detectives from every department, gathered for their regular Thursday morning meeting. “Niall Horan’s our best lead right now, so far as finding someone who knows the whereabouts of our perps is concerned.”

 

Someone from homicide shifts in his seat, and Eleanor rather pointedly gives him the floor, annoyed at being interrupted.

 

“Do you know anything about Niall Horan?” The officer shakes his head. “He’s a second-rate Irish crime boss but he’s got a lot of friends in low places. You won’t be strolling up to his front door and asking for a polite chat. Best case scenario, you don’t find him. Worst case…”

 

“We’re aware,” Eleanor cuts in. “We did our homework.”

 

“We want to bring him in,” Liam says. “I’ve got the DA’s office filing charges against him now.”

 

A murmur runs through the room. “What kind of charges?” The question comes from Danielle, a former beat cop who recently made Vice.

 

Liam shrugs. “Nothing that will hold up in court. It doesn’t need to. We’ll tie his lawyers up in a day or two’s worth of paperwork and have that polite chat someone was talking about just now. Or… we’ll tell him we can spare him the trouble if he gives us the location of our fugitives.”

 

“Must be nice to be married to a DA lawyer,” someone in the back mutters.

 

“It  _is_ ,” Eleanor says brightly, before Liam can even do more than blink. “It’s extremely helpful. It enables us get criminals off the streets more quickly, which, as a police officer sworn to uphold the law, I find fairly  _excellent._ ”

 

No one has any response to that.

 

“Great, so.” Eleanor smiles winningly at them all. “Every time we come at him with a squadron of police cars, he finds a way to skip town or sends enforcers at us with guns blazing. We can’t let him know we’re coming.”

 

Liam nods. “Right. We need someone who can get us close to Horan with an arrest warrant in hand. Any takers?”

 

\--

The plainclothes officer from Vice, Danielle, flags them down when they’re two blocks from the address she gave them. Hopping into the back seat, she directs Eleanor to park in an alleyway, glancing around nervously.

 

“Did you have to bring a car that  _looks_  like a cop car?” She demands.

 

“This is police business,” Liam says, as Eleanor kills the ignition and pockets the keys. “At least it’s unmarked.”

 

“When I saw it, I was half expecting you two to be in full riot gear,” Danielle complains.

 

She takes them down the alleyway and leads them through a network of smaller streets. Liam is wearing a nondescript long-sleeved shirt and jeans, and he gets more than one sidelong look that suggests that even still, he is not quite dressed down enough for this neighbourhood. Eleanor did a better job in a tank top and fitted leather jacket that Liam is surprised she owns. The looks she gets are mostly of the admiring variety.

 

“Hold hands or something,” Danielle mutters suddenly, when they’re two or three houses down. “Act like you actually like each other.”

 

Liam looks momentarily surprised, but Eleanor catches on and tucks a hand into the back pocket of Liam’s jeans.

 

“We’re undercover now, I gather,” Liam says, belatedly circling an arm around her waist.

 

“No, I just wanted to grab your bum,” Eleanor replies.

 

They circle around to the side of the nondescript brick house that Danielle had initially directed them to, and wait as she opens the screen and gives a two-knuckled rap on the inside door.

 

The door opens a solid ninety seconds later. Danielle doesn’t seem surprised by the wait. A woman leans out, peroxide blonde with narrowed eyes.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“These are my friends,” Danielle said. “The ones I was mentioning.”

 

The blonde woman gives them a once over, her eyes lingering on Liam. “They look like cops.”

 

Danielle laughs. “Do I look thick?”

 

“I was kidding.” The woman glances over her shoulder, into the house. “Anyhow, he’s busy now, but you can come back in an hour.”

 

“You said he’d be available now,” Danielle says.

 

“Well.” The woman shrugs. “He’s not.”

 

There’s something odd about the way she speaks, even if there’s nothing that immediately puts Liam on his guard. He glances around the quiet brick laneway between the two houses, noticing how the curtains are drawn on every window. For some reason, it gives him a prickling feeling on the back of his neck.

 

Liam thinks suddenly of the gun tucked into the back of his jeans and mentally runs through their exit strategies. Next to him, he feels Eleanor shift, and knows that the anxiety is catching.

 

“Perrie,” Danielle is saying. “Do not fuck with me right now.”

 

“We need to leave,” Eleanor murmurs, and the tension seems to heighten even as she says it, an electric thrum in the atmosphere that sets off every single one of Liam’s alarm bells.

 

“I told you, he’s not here now,” Perrie says, unconcerned, and her eyes flicker over to Liam and Eleanor even as Danielle continues to argue with her, oblivious.

 

There’s a screech of tires from around the corner, and Eleanor draws her gun, lightning quick, and drags Liam out of the centre of the laneway. No sooner do they reach the wall than a car hurtles past the mouth of the alleyway, windows down, and there’s a sharp crack of sound. Pebbles rain down on Liam’s head, but he realizes belatedly that it’s chips of brick; someone’s  _shooting_ at them, and he draws his gun and puts himself in front of Eleanor, staying low.

 

The door snaps shut behind them as Perrie vanishes back into the house. Liam sees Danielle out of the corner of his eye, and she hurtles away from them, low as she can get, rolling when she gets close enough to safety even as a spatter of bullets hammer the corner of the house.

 

The tires screech again, and the car takes off. Liam and Eleanor bolt for the entrance of the laneway in pursuit, and Liam fires at the vehicle as soon as he can see it and knows that there are no bystanders in the way. It’s a moving target and it’s hard to hit, but one of them gets lucky; Liam doesn’t know if it’s his bullet or Eleanor’s that hammers through one of the tires, causing the car to careen wildly. A second bullet takes out the back windshield.

 

Someone leans out as soon as the glass is gone, and Eleanor shouts, “Get  _down –_ ”

 

 Liam sees the gleam in the suspect’s hand that translates immediately to  _gun_ , but even as he thinks it, there’s a searing pressure in his chest that startles him so much that it knocks him flat on his back. He lies there, winded, for a long moment, blinking at the sky, and then Eleanor is in his field of vision.

 

Distantly, Liam can hear someone’s voice – Danielle’s? – and the fuzz of the police radio:  _Officer down, officer down._

 

“What even – ” Liam’s breath catches in his throat, so he tries again: “Did they get away?”

 

“They did, yeah, but they've got a damaged tire. We'll catch up.”

 

Liam processes this. “Can you go back to the car and follow him?”

 

“Payne, you’ve been shot.” Eleanor deftly removes her shoe, peels off a sock, and uses it to apply pressure to the wound.

 

“That seems unsanitary,” Liam decides, trying to look down at it.

 

Eleanor snorts. “I didn’t have a lot of other options. I don’t take my top off unless someone’s dying. And  _you_  wouldn’t even appreciate the view.”

 

“Mmm.” Liam shifts a little, trying to get away from the white-hot lightning that stabs through his lungs every time he breathes. Unsurprisingly, moving makes it worse. “I’m not dying?”

 

“No, you idiot. Can’t even get shot properly, can you?”

 

Eleanor’s trash-talking gets more aggressive when she’s afraid.

 

“I’m not dying,” Liam repeats, and he can taste metal in his mouth but he ignores it because he’s  _not dying._  “Go and arrest Horan.”

 

Eleanor hesitates.

 

“Go,” Liam says, more firmly, and Eleanor nods because he’s right and she knows it. She waves over Danielle, who takes up the position putting pressure on the wound even as Eleanor disappears back down the laneway.

 

There’s a haze around Liam’s eyes that he doesn’t particularly like. “Is back-up coming?” He asks.

 

“Yes,” Danielle replies. “They’re coming down the street now, don’t worry. They were on standby in case something like this happened, remember? Eleanor’s going to have more help than she needs.”

 

That’s probably true; Eleanor hates sharing the glory of an arrest unless she absolutely has to.

 

Liam loses track of things as time slips by; eventually, Danielle is replaced in his field of vision by two EMTs who are talking to him, but Liam finds it hard to track their voices. They’re tending to his wound and bundling him onto a stretcher, their words coming at him from the other end of a long tunnel.

 

It’s curiously clear as a bell when he hears someone he can’t see say:  _Horan’s done it this time._

_Made himself a cop-killer._


	6. It Catches Up With You

Harry sags against the wall next to Louis. He’s been wandering about the living room all morning, picking things up and putting them down, busying himself with the things that don’t matter, while Louis watches him and smokes. He has a free pass to do it inside, because as much as Niall doesn’t like it, it’s not exactly safe for him to duck out onto the fire escape and chit-chat with the neighbours every time he wants a dart.

 

Louis mutely offers him a cigarette. Harry takes it automatically, then re-thinks it and puts it back.

 

“I’m trying to quit, you enabler,” he says, but there’s no heat in his voice.

 

“Quit when things are less stressful,” Louis advises.

 

Harry rolls his head on his neck, restless. “Things are never less stressful.”

 

Harry’s got that low, smooth,  _slow_  delivery, and just the way he says it makes Louis’ lips curl upward. “Generally we haven’t had a large number of very close brushes with law enforcement in a week-long period,” he replies, stowing his smokes with a shrug because Harry’s probably going to un-quit if they don’t hear from Niall sometime soon.

 

Harry doesn’t immediately reply. Then: “I really hate the sound of sirens.”

 

Louis doesn’t have anything to say to that, so he doesn’t. He reaches out, and Harry lets him tangle their fingers together.

 

When Harry’s phone buzzes, Louis jerks like he’d been waiting for it and it had managed to startle him anyway. Harry fumbles in his pocket, bringing the mobile up to his ear.

 

“Niall?”

 

“My idiot employee shot a police officer.”

 

Niall sounds annoyed more than overly upset. Harry freezes, though, his fingers clenched around the phone.

 

“I thought you said that wasn’t likely to happen.”

 

“He wasn’t supposed to,” Niall says. “I had to leave him in someone’s garden. Too much of a risk, protecting him. This’ll give the police something to do that isn’t hunting for you lads, anyway.”

 

Harry processes this. “They’ll think we did it,” he says. “Or that we helped.”

 

“They might,” Niall agrees.

 

“Is he dead?”

 

Niall sounds distracted; Harry imagines he’s driving, a careful eye on his rearview mirror as he puts distance between himself and the fading sound of sirens. “My employee?”

 

“No.” Harry runs his tongue along his lower lip. “The cop.”

 

“No idea,” Niall replies. “Turn on the news.”

 

Harry hangs up and turns to Louis, who is watching him closely.

 

“Niall’s shooter might have killed a cop.”

 

Louis swears under his breath and immediately pushes away from the wall. He flicks on the television before Harry even tells him to, speeding through channels until he finds one with an officious-looking newscaster.

 

_“…shootout with the police… reports coming in… officer down… police have not confirmed…”_

 

Harry takes his eyes off the news coverage as soon as he realizes that it’s not going to tell them anything useful and looks at Louis instead. The light from the television reflects in his eyes, flickering as the screen shows grainy footage from the crime scene and blown-up versions of their mug shots.

 

“Fuck,” Louis says succinctly, after a long while.

 

Harry reaches for him and curls a hand over the back of Louis’ neck, the way Louis has done to him countless times, and he doesn’t know if he’s surprised or not when Louis shudders under his touch.

 

“Hey – ” Harry begins, and before he can even finish, Louis has curled into him, arm around Harry’s waist with his face pressed into Harry’s chest, holding on like he’s afraid someone’s going to take Harry from him.

 

And maybe – Harry wonders if maybe he is.

 

“We’re not going back to prison, Lou,” he says, wondering where the conviction in his voice comes from. He has an arm around Louis’ shoulders, holding him close, and never mind the awkward angle.

 

“Aren’t we?” Louis pulls away, but Harry fists a hand in the material of his shirt just in time and doesn’t let him create undue space between them. He can see Louis’ eyes now, though, and there’s that expression in them that reminds Harry of being afraid, what feels like forever ago now, when Louis looked at him and didn’t know if Harry had told the deputy warden about what he’d done to Ray-Ray.

 

“I won’t let it happen,” Harry says.

 

Louis huffs out a harsh laugh and turns away. There’s a tightness in the lines of his shoulders that is as good as a warning. “Do you think I need you to take care of me, Harry Styles?”

 

Harry tightens his grip on Louis’ t-shirt, though he doesn’t pull Louis back toward him or insist on eye contact. Louis is generally easy-going, not at all hard to get along with, but he’s got rage that he keeps just under his heart and sometimes he doesn’t bother to tamp down on it. Harry treads carefully. “I’m not trying to take care of you.”

 

Louis expels a breath, and it’s not even an attempt at laughter this time. “You think you owe me that much, because I didn’t let Ray-Ray rape you or Nigel cut you open.”

 

“No,” Harry says flatly, because he does owe Louis for those things but that’s not why he took Louis with him when he broke out of prison.

 

“When I went to juvy the first time, I was sixteen,” Louis bites out. “They held me down in the showers my first night. They meant to teach me a lesson, because I’d been  _sarcastic_  and  _arrogant_  all day.” He spits out those words in a way that makes it very clear he’s quoting someone else. “I stayed  _sarcastic_  and  _arrogant_ , but I learned how to fight and how to make the right friends. And I learned how to inflict pain and not care.”

 

Harry is frozen in place, eyes trained on Louis’ back, his fingers holding that handful of Louis’ shirt so tightly that his knuckles ache.

 

“So you don’t, in fact, owe me anything,” Louis continues, and there’s a hard edge under his words, bright and dangerous. “Because I kept you from having to learn any of those things, and when we go back, when they send us to  _separate_  prisons, you’re going to get eaten alive.”

 

There is a beat of silence before Harry slides off the sofa and drops into a crouch in front of Louis, not letting go of him. “We’re not going back. I – ”

 

“Won’t let that happen, yeah,” Louis finishes for him, and he does look down at Harry then, like he needs to prove that it’s anger in his face then and not some emotion that will make Harry pity him. “And I told you that you don’t owe me anything.”

 

“For  _fuck’s_  sake,” Harry growls, and he rises, lightning-quick, and clambers onto the couch, one knee on either side of Louis’ hips, slotting their bodies together. When he kisses him,  _hard_ , burying his fingers in Louis’ hair to keep him from moving away, Louis makes a sound in the back of his throat, and his fingers dig in to Harry’s thighs. It’s an unpleasant pressure that’s going to leave marks, but Harry doesn’t even care.

 

“I didn’t bring you with me because I  _owed_  you,” Harry snaps when they break apart. “I did it because I bloody – I  _like_  you. A great deal, as it happens. So.” He catches his lower lip between his teeth; watches Louis’ eyes follow the motion. “So you can stop thinking that. And you can also stop thinking that we’re going back because we’re  _not_.”

 

“Sure of that?” Louis asks, but there’s less grit in his tone.

 

“I promise,” Harry says firmly, cupping Louis’ face, swiping a thumb almost involuntarily across Louis’ cheekbone where scar from Nigel’s knife makes a ridge. “Even though I can’t read you more often than I’d like and I don’t know what you meant when you kissed me before we got out. And I don’t know if this is the sort of thing you’d like me to be doing or if you thought we were more on a ‘best mates’ track, but you wouldn’t shut up about me owing you so I had to climb on you. No regrets. Also I – ”

 

“My  _God_ ,” Louis says, possibly a bit in awe. “You  _do_  talk some shit, don’t you?”

 

And then he tips up his chin and kisses Harry, nipping lightly at Harry’s lower lip, and Harry doesn’t have to be asked twice; he presses Louis’ shoulders back against the couch, following him down, and it’s so graceless that Louis laughs against his mouth. Despite everything, despite the uncertainty of their lives right now, Harry smiles into the sound.

 

\--

 

Zayn has his head bent over a Niall Horan’s file, documents spread out around him on his desk, when his phone goes off. He idly reaches over and tilts it up so that he can see who’s calling.

 

_Eleanor Calder (PD)_

 

Zayn saved her number into his phone like that forever ago, before she became Liam’s partner and started coming over for Friday night dinners. He likes her; she’s forthright, easy to get along with, and she would lay down her life for Liam. He’s just as likely to do a lawyerly favour for her now as he is for his husband.

 

Nevertheless, the sight of her name on his phone, when he knows that the arrest of Niall Horan is happening this very morning, sends ice water down his back.

 

When he picks up, he hears himself say, “Yeah?” and wonders where the formalities have gone, the “Zayn Malik speaking” and “how can I help you?” that used to launch his phone conversations.

 

Eleanor’s tone mirrors his. “It’s Liam.”

 

Zayn’s hand tightens around the phone. “Where?”

 

“St. Mike’s.”

 

Zayn is already tossing his phone into his pocket as he shrugs into his jacket. He leaves the office, and it’s funny, because people barely look up; this happens all the time, he and his colleagues having to come and go at top speed to take care of this evidence or that case, and none of them even register the look on his face that would tell them how much more important this is.

 

Zayn flags down a cab to take him to St. Michael’s General Hospital, and he’s thankful later that he didn’t drive because he doesn’t remember the ride at all. Eleanor comes out to meet him when he arrives, and they pull each other into a hug like two forces magnetized by nature.

 

“He’s in surgery now,” she mumbles into his shoulder. “The bullet punctured his lung. I could  _hear_  him drowning – ”

 

Eleanor, who does  _not_  cry, pulls away from him and presses the back of her hand to her nose.

 

“When will we know?” Zayn asks tensely.

 

Eleanor shakes her head. “They said that the only thing we can do is wait.”

 

After the headlong panic of the rush to the hospital, Zayn thinks he’s going to lose his mind when he has to sit down in one of those hard plastic visitors’ chairs and simply trust Liam to strangers. Eleanor is squeezing his fingers like she’s forgotten she’s even doing it, and there is nothing about a hospital that inspires calm at the best of times. People are constantly coming and going, and Zayn finds that he can’t even sit still.

 

“I’m going to get a coffee,” he says abruptly, and Eleanor nods, lets go of his hand, and drags her fingers through her hair. She looks like a shadow version of herself.

 

When he returns, he drinks his coffee mostly because it gives him something to do with his hands. Eleanor just holds hers in both hands until it’s cold. Zayn gently pries it out of her fingers and throws it away with his own cup.

 

“Remember that guy I dated who felt threatened by Liam?” She says suddenly.

 

Zayn sits down next to her again and simply nods.

 

 “He came into the station one day and confronted him, remember? Liam was  _stammering._  He had no idea what to say.” Eleanor tucks her hair behind her ear and smiles a little at the memory. “He told the bloke – David – that he was married, and David said that made it even worse, so Liam, in desperation, grabbed your very male wedding photo from his desk and just sort of thrust it at him. Wide-eyed Detective Liam Payne, holding his wedding photo at arms’ length like a shield against an angry chav a head shorter.”

 

Zayn displays the barest flicker of a smile, but it’s genuine.   

 

“What about that time I let him have three beers even though you told me not to?” Eleanor goes on.

 

“He woke up under your futon, and texted me that he thought he’d been drugged and kidnapped,” Zayn says, and Eleanor chokes off a laugh even as Zayn’s smile widens.

 

“I was sick with a fever once,” Eleanor remembers. “He came by to check on me and I told him that my mother used to sing ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ to help me sleep. He only knew about half the words but he didn’t even hesitate.”

 

“He never knows more than half the words,” Zayn replies, sounding fond. “He only needs one line, or two, and he’ll mumble through the rest like he’s some kind of – bebop singer from the forties.”

 

“Yes,” Eleanor agrees with a laugh, “ _yes_ , that’s exactly what it sounds like.”

 

Zayn relaxes back into his seat, finding suddenly that some of the tension is gone. “Good God, I think I’m going to go mad if they don’t come out and tell us something soon.”

 

“I know,” Eleanor agrees. “He’s probably being hard to get along with in there. Decided now would be a good time to turn into the rebellious sort.”

 

“I expect he’s arguing with them about when he can go back to work,” Zayn replies dryly.

 

Eleanor grins. “How soon he can start training for the marathon.”

 

“When he’ll be able to join the space program.”

 

“Are you here for Detective Payne?”

 

Eleanor and Zayn look up at the same time when the nurse speaks.

 

“Yes. Yes,” Zayn says immediately, half-rising.

 

“Mrs. Payne?” The nurse says deliberately, directing the question at Eleanor.

 

For a moment, Eleanor looks so startled that Zayn almost laughs, despite the bubble of anger in his throat at the pointed assumption.

 

“No,” she says. “ _No_. Uh – Mr. Payne.” She pushes Zayn slightly toward the nurse, who looks about as surprised as Eleanor.

 

“Malik, in fact,” Zayn says mildly, “ _Zayn Payne_ would be slightly ridiculous,” but he flashes her his wedding ring.

 

“This is a Catholic hospital,” the nurse says, tight-lipped.

 

“Is it the gay, the Muslim, or both that you object to?” Zayn asks, still even-tempered. Beside him, Eleanor doesn’t even interfere. He has a hunch she’s grinning.

 

The nurse doesn’t seem to know what to do beyond giving him a darkly disapproving look.

 

“I’m a lawyer,” Zayn tells her, and there’s no note of a threat in his voice, but he leans in slightly. “If you get between me and my husband, you’ll find out precisely how good of a lawyer I am.”

 

There’s another beat of silence. Then: “Well, he’s out of surgery,” the nurse says at last, barely civil. “They’re getting him settled in a bed and then you’ll be able to see him.”

 

“Thank you,” Zayn says, and he doesn’t think he injects anything in particular into his tone, but the nurse scurries away without saying anything else and Eleanor snorts.

 

“Does that happen often?” She asks.

 

“Not as often as you’d think,” Zayn replies. “Luckily.”

 

Ten minutes later, a different nurse leads them to Liam’s room. She gives them instructions in a voice that is almost a whisper, about how they can see him but he won’t be awake right away, and that  _rest_  is paramount. Eleanor nods along patiently, but Zayn is already looking over her shoulder.

 

Liam looks like hell. When Zayn sits down carefully on one side of the bed, Eleanor sits on the other, and Zayn takes one of Liam’s hands between both of his. Liam’s face is pale and puffy around the oxygen mask, and for possibly the first time in his life, he doesn’t respond to Zayn’s touch.

 

The three of them exist on a plane of their own for an interminable period of silence, hiding from the outside world and totally inwardly focused. After a long time, Eleanor mutely tugs back the blanket to look at the bandage on Liam’s chest, and Zayn doesn’t stop her.

 

“It’s smaller than I thought,” she says softly.

 

Zayn doesn’t have the words to answer her. Sometime between the camaraderie of the hallway and right now, the reality of Liam’s  _almost_ -death has slammed into them from nowhere.

 

Sometime toward morning, Eleanor goes home to catch a couple of hours of sleep before she has to go into work. It’s her responsibility to work this case now, and its resolution has become even more important. Niall Horan, Harry Styles, and Louis Tomlinson tried to murder a police officer. Zayn would be surprised if they make it to prison in one piece. Funnily enough, cop-killers don’t do well in police custody.

 

Zayn stays right where he is, ignoring the nurses who come in to check on Liam and nodding distantly at the doctor who comes in to tell him nothing that he doesn’t already know.  _Wait and see. Wait and see._

 

Zayn has never imagined he would be this tired of waiting.

 

\--

Harry is curled around Louis, a leg flung over his and an arm flush against his ribs, tucking him against Harry’s chest. The warm weight of it is comforting, and the slow in-and-out of Harry’s breathing against the back of his neck makes Louis not want to stir and disturb the balance of things.

 

He does it anyway, because Niall is coming back soon and they’ve got to be ready for anything. Besides, Louis is unused to cuddling; there hasn’t been an opportunity for that kind of closeness in a long time, and maybe he needs some time to process. Harry lets out a grumble of protest as soon as Louis shrugs out from under his arm.

 

“I’m getting dressed,” Louis tells him, even as Harry grapples for purchase on his shoulder to pull him back in. Louis ducks out of the way.

 

“I’m sure Niall knows,” Harry says, yawning, but he sits up anyway, running a hand through gloriously disastrous hair.

 

“Knows about what?” Louis asks, pulling jeans on over a distracting lack of underwear.

 

“Uh.” Harry glances up at Louis’ face. “This. Us.”

 

“We’re the subject of a top-priority police manhunt, love.” Louis comes around the back of the couch to hunt for his shirt. He drags a hand through Harry’s curls as he passes, and Harry tips his head back into it and closes his eyes. “I like to minimize my risk of being arrested, or forced to flee, with my bits out.”

 

“I don’t know,” Harry says, eyes still closed. “I think the papers would like that.”

 

“Hush,” Louis replies, tugging his shirt over his head. “My _mum_ reads the papers.”

 

Harry smiles. “I’m sure your mum’s seen your bits before.”

 

“She has, she just prefers it when I keep the public nudity to a minimum,” Louis says wryly, tossing Harry’s trousers at him.

 

Harry bats them aside, but he does commence a reluctant, half-hearted search for his boxers. Louis drops back down onto the couch and pulls the remote out from between two cushions. The television has been on the whole time, but with the volume turned down low. Louis turns it back up, wondering if there are any updates yet or if the news channel is running the same information on a cycle that it had an hour ago.

 

_“Investigators are saying now that they have arrested a suspect…”_

 

“That’ll be Niall’s guy,” Harry says, halfway through tugging on his shorts and watching the screen.

 

_“Police have released the name of the officer shot at the scene, now known to be in hospital in critical condition…”_

 

“Lee-yum Payne,” Harry reads out, as the screen flashes to a photo of a stoic-faced man in a uniform, and Louis almost drops the remote.

 

“Jesus,” Louis blurts out. Of _course_ it would be Liam.

 

“What?” Harry asks, dropping down next to him on the couch.

 

Liam drags his hands over his face. “Liam Payne,” he says, voice muffled. “I grew up with him.”

 

“Oh. Shit.” Harry squeezes his shoulder.

 

“Yeah. We shot the only cop in the entire country who likes me,” Louis mumbles.

 

“We didn’t shoot him,” Harry corrects, rubbing soothing circles into Louis’ back. “And anyway, he’s not dead. They said he’s in hospital.”

 

 “This is going to make him so much worse,” Louis says, because he _knows_ Liam.

 

“Worse?” Harry echoes.

 

“If he was determined to find us before, now he’ll have no rest until he tracks us down. He’ll make it his mission in life. He’s like the - Gay Terminator.”

 

Harry snorts. “Well, at least we know what we’re up against.”

 

“Fair enough.” Louis turns off the television and sits back, even as Harry automatically leans in against him. “I’m glad he wasn’t killed. Not just because it’d make it harder on us if he had been.”

 

Harry accepts that, running his fingers absently down the inside of Louis’ forearm. “Did you date him, then?”

 

“What? No. It’s _Liam_ ,” Louis says, like that should be enough to express how revolting that thought is. “I’ve known him since we were both in nappies, crawling around and eating sand.”

 

“So high school, then,” Harry says, and Louis grins and lets him get away with it.

 

“He was my best mate,” Louis clarifies. “We found ourselves on slightly different life paths and sort of drifted apart.”

 

“Hmm.” Harry hums against Louis’ neck, thoughtful. “Maybe you can talk to him.”

 

Louis gives Harry both eyebrows raised. “Yeah? _Haven’t spoken to you in five years, Liam, just wanted to say sorry about the attempted murder earlier?_ ”

 

“Yeah, exactly that,” Harry replies dryly. He lifts his head so he can rest his chin on Louis’ shoulder. “What I meant was, maybe you can tell him that it wasn’t us who shot him.”

 

“Provided he doesn’t arrest me on the spot,” Louis says.

 

“D’you think he would?” Harry asks. “You were best friends.”

 

“Yeah, ages ago,” Louis replies, but he sounds thoughtful.

 

“It’s worth a try,” Harry says.

 

Louis shakes his head. “I don’t know. It’s not safe for us to go out.”

 

“God forbid we ever do anything _not safe_ ,” Harry says dryly, and his fingers drift over the scar that Nigel left, the slim band of silvering pink that bisects Louis’ face.

 

“Mmm, well.” Louis catches Harry’s wrist lightly before he can complete the track. Harry tugs free and moves on to Louis’ collarbone instead, and Louis relaxes under his fingers. “There’s necessary risk and then there’s being daft.”

 

“The bedside of the detective in charge of hunting you down is probably the last place they’ll expect you to be,” Harry points out. “We’ll go at night, when no one’s about. I’ll help. I’m very good at distractions, you see.”

 

His fingers dip down to the hem of Louis’ shirt even as his mouth takes their place against Louis’ throat, mouthing lingering kisses into the hollow over Louis’ collarbone.

 

“Mind you don’t try that one on the hospital staff,” Louis says mildly. There’s the barest hitch in his voice, and it makes Harry grin.

 

\--

 

“Eleanor says they made an arrest – not at the scene, but an hour later. They found one of Horan’s lackeys hiding injured in someone’s garden.”

 

Zayn rolls his eyes good-naturedly; he’s just come in, he hasn’t even sat  _down_ , and Liam wants to talk about the case.

 

“I brought you proper food,” Zayn says, holding up a white takeout bag, “but you can’t have it unless you agree not to talk about your case for half an hour.”

 

Liam’s eyes zero in on the takeout bag. “I’m so sick of hospital food, I could vomit.”

 

“And it might taste better coming back up, I know.” Zayn sets the bag down on the tray next to Liam’s bed. “So. Can we talk about something unrelated to police work?”

 

“Did you have anything specific in mind?” Liam asks, and he has the grace to look slightly guilty as he glances up at his husband.

 

Zayn can’t resist; he leans down and drops a kiss on Liam’s upturned nose. “I figured we would just have a regular conversation,” he says dryly. “I think, at some point, we used to do that.”

 

“Those are acceptable terms,” Liam says, a little ruefully, and Zayn hides a smile and sets up the takeout on the tray for him, settling it onto his lap.

 

It’s nice, that they can sit here and talk like this, Zayn decides. They communicate pretty well on a regular basis anyway – Zayn prides himself on being a great listener, and Liam is always straight-forward about everything, including his feelings – but they’ve both been caught up in work a lot lately, and Zayn can’t remember the last time they didn’t talk shop.

 

The food is long gone, and Zayn has Liam helpless with laughter with his impressions of each of the hospital staff if they were all to attend a kegger together, when a nurse knocks on the door frame.

 

“Mr. Malik?” He inquires. “Would you come with me for a minute? We’ve got some documents for you to sign for when we release Detective Payne into your care.”

 

Zayn settles a hand on Liam’s knee through the blankets. “I’ll be back,” he promises, still grinning, and follows the nurse out into the corridor.

 

Liam is packing up the takeout containers one-handed when he hears someone come back into the room. “That was quick. The nurse made it sound like there was more paperwork than that,” he says, stuffing the Styrofoam back into the bag with difficulty.

 

“That wasn’t a nurse,” someone replies. “And you’re off your game, Detective Payne.”

 


	7. The Town Lit Up (The World Got Still)

Liam’s face is the picture of shock, and Louis relishes it.

 

“I’m arresting you,” Liam says at once.

 

“You and what army?” Louis comes around to the side of the bed and drops into the chair Zayn has just vacated.

 

“Where are you taking Zayn?” Liam demands.

 

“Relax.” Louis waves a hand. “Harry’s making up a sob story and requesting legal advice. He’ll be awhile. How’s your shoulder?”

 

“You didn’t shoot me in the shoulder; you shot me in the chest and punctured a lung,” Liam says flatly.

 

“That’s dramatic.” Louis sounds surprised. “Sorry about that.”

 

“Why are you  _here_?” Liam demands. “Until last night, there was an officer on duty outside my room, and my partner essentially lives here when she’s not at work. You’re taking a big risk.”

 

“It’s a calculated risk, though.” Louis clasps his hands together and leans forward, elbows resting on his knees. “I need your help, mate.”

 

“We’re not mates,” Liam says stiffly. “We haven’t been mates in a long time. And what happened to your face?”

 

“Prison happened,” Louis says impatiently, dismissing it. “But we were mates, though. Ten years ago, I would’ve said you were my best.”

 

“Ten years ago, you hadn’t shot me yet,” Liam points out, and he’d fold his arms if the one weren’t bundled in a sling.

 

Louis sighs. “I didn’t shoot you.”

 

Liam snorts. “Oh, no? Which of your accomplices are you going to sell down the river?”

 

“The one you’ve got already.” Louis is dead serious. “And he’s not my accomplice. He was Niall’s employee and he was meant to scare you off, not actually shoot you.”

 

Liam doesn’t even say anything. He just raises a slow eyebrow.

 

Louis throws up his hands. “Yeah, well, he cocked it up, didn’t he?”

 

“Louis, you’re a wanted felon. I’m sorry if I  _don’t believe you._ ”

 

Louis snaps his fingers. “There it is. First-name basis.”

 

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

 

“Yes it does.” Louis’ eyes have the same wicked dance in them as they did the last time Liam saw him, like he thinks that nothing will ever catch up to him; nothing will ever  _stick_. “You’d call me by my surname if you didn’t care. Just hear me out.”

 

Liam feels a headache starting. He’s been short of breath for hours; has been assuming that it’s because his lung is healing, and hasn’t brought it up with anyone. Louis’ mere existence makes it worse, he’s sure of it. “Hear you out about what?”

 

“Didn’t you notice that there was hardly any returning fire?” Louis asks. “You’re a police officer, Liam, and good enough to make Detective; think about it. You were hammering that car, and maybe a handful of bullets came back in your direction. If there had been three of us, you’d have had a hail of them, wouldn’t you?”

 

Liam just looks at Louis, not saying anything. Louis accepts it as his cue to continue.

 

“Harry and I weren’t shooting at you because we  _weren’t even in the vehicle_. We’d stayed at Niall’s, knowing that the car would draw you off, and it did. Niall was driving, but it was his lackey in the back seat firing at you, and he had instructions to shoot to  _miss._ ”

 

Liam shakes his head, surprised at how much effort it takes. He gets tired easily, and has since the shooting, but this is – different. The fact that it registers that way makes him pause for thought for a moment, because he couldn't say why. He wonders how much of it he can blame on Louis’ exhausting presence. “Do you have proof?”

 

Louis shrugs. “I know you can match the caliber of the bullet to the gun it came out of; the one that was found with the bloke you arrested. You won’t be able to test ours, but you’ll have to take it on faith that none of us also own a Smith & Wesson 9 mm.”

 

Liam gives him an incredulous look. “You want me to take it on  _faith_  – ?”

 

“Niall left him for you to find for a reason,” Louis says firmly. “He says he doesn’t have room for the kind of trouble a cop-slaying will bring down on his head, and he sends his apologies.”

 

“Oh, as long as he sends his apologies,” Liam mutters.

 

“When did you get so bitter?” Louis asks, not unkindly. “We were  _best friends_ , Liam. I still trust  _you._  Enough to come in here with the belief that you wouldn’t call for help the second I walked in the door.”

 

“ _I’ve_ never been to prison,” Liam points out, but he doesn’t elaborate, because coming up with more points in favour of his own trustworthiness seems like an undertaking that’s too exhausting to contemplate. Which doesn’t make a lot of sense, but maybe he’ll analyze it later when he’s not so tired.

 

“Prison teaches you a lot of things,” Louis replies firmly, “not least of which is,  _know who your friends are._ ”

 

After a long moment, Liam sighs. “I miss the bit when you used to get me to buy alcohol because I looked more responsible than you. I mean, I miss when that was all it was.”

 

“I do, too,” Louis replies. “You had a smaller stick up your arse back then.”

 

“Who was it asking who for a favour?” Liam asks pointedly.

 

“I know. Old habits.” Louis grins. “Honestly, though, I respect you, mate. For not following me down into all the nonsense.”

 

“I was never going to,” Liam says, closing his eyes and settling back against the pillows. “We both knew that. I was always telling you to stop doing that thing where you managed to get us both into equal amounts of trouble. And then one day you did.”

 

Louis ducks his head, nodding. “One day I did, yeah. Got into trouble by myself after that. Which is probably how I ended up in prison because you were always the only one with any common sense.”

 

“You’ve got common sense,” Liam disagrees, eyes still closed. “You just pretend like you haven’t.”

 

“Semi-accurate,” Louis agrees thoughtfully.

 

“ _Semi_ -accurate?” Liam tries to be only marginally amused. “When I hear a voice in the back of my head saying, _no, Liam, stop, that’s a terrible idea, think of the consequences_ , I listen. When you hear that voice  - ”

 

“I say, ‘Liam, shut up, you tosser’, and it goes away to sulk,” Louis finishes for him.

 

“I don’t want to be your inner voice,” Liam complains, and it’s work not to make his words slur together.

 

“Too late,” Louis says cheerfully.

 

Liam’s hand absently travels up to smooth down his bandage in the ensuing silence, and Louis doesn’t miss the set of his teeth when he does it.

 

“I really am sorry for the whole bullet-wound situation,” Louis says.

 

“I know.” Liam sighs. “The bother of it all is that I believe you. It doesn’t matter, though. You still owe prison time for the last offences you committed. You’ll have to go back.”

 

“I’ll make you a deal,” Louis offers. “You make the case for Niall’s associate having fired the shot that knocked you flat. It’s not a lie, and the ensuing media frenzy will enable Harry and I to skip town undetected.”

 

“I’m not making any _deals_ with you,” Liam says firmly. Reluctantly, he opens his eyes and adds, “I’ll follow up on Horan’s employee as a suspect because it’s my job.”

 

Louis grins at him.

 

“And you have until I’m up and about to go be someone else’s problem in another jurisdiction,” Liam warns. “If I see you again, I’ll arrest you.”

 

Louis reaches over and ruffles his hair. “I knew you’d see sense, Detective Payne.”

 

“Louis,” Liam says seriously, “I mean it.”

 

“I know. I respect that. You have a job to do.” Louis rises, a spring in his step. “Tell Zayn I said hello.”

 

“I will not,” Liam replies.

 

“Then at least tell him he’s way too pretty for you.”

 

Liam takes a deep breath and lets it out gradually, wincing at the stab in his lungs.

 

Louis halts halfway across the room, making a face. “Hearing you do that reminds me of that time in primary.”

 

“Which?”

 

“With the ambulance and whatnot.” Louis waves a hand. “That time when the principal held an assembly and told everyone about kidney diseases.”

 

“Oh. Right.” Liam blinks slowly at Louis. “You remember that.”

 

“Of course I remember that. My best mate went away in an ambulance. I was eight. It was _terrifying._ ”

 

“Yeah, I – I just remember being so tired,” Liam says, and then he misses something because the next thing he realizes, Louis is at his bedside, alert.

 

“Liam?”

 

Liam blinks once; twice. “Yeah. ‘m okay.”

 

“Liam, tell me if the last few days have been like this.”

 

Liam struggles; gets a breath in, lets it out. “Yes. No. Was feeling better.”

 

Louis curls his fingers over Liam’s hand, and it’s less of a tender gesture than a way to keep his attention as he drifts in and out. “What kind of pain medication are you on?”

 

Liam looks like he’s grasping at something he can’t find, and it’s draining. “Don’t know. Switched it yesterday morning; one I had first wasn’t working that well.”

 

Louis’s fingers tighten around Liam’s. He remembers this vividly from when they were children; how Liam’s pain meds came via needles, expensive ones that his mum had to go without to afford, because he couldn’t process regular pain medication. And Louis wonders at how carefully Liam’s latest doctor read his file, or the fine print of whatever pain medication he or she’s got Liam hooked up to.

 

“I’m going to get you some help,” Louis promises, even though he knows that this is the last place he can be seen, with that can’t-miss-it scar down his face and a well-publicized mug shot posted on the bulletin boards in this very hospital. He’ll figure it out, he thinks; he just knows that this can’t wait, that he can’t ring the nurse’s buzzer and walk away, because he might be the only who knows these things about Liam and by the time they figure it out on their own, it might be too late.

 

He’s turning away from the bed when he hears footsteps in the hallway that don't pass by. The lawyer Liam married is over-dressed for the hospital, and his shoes squeak on the polished floor until they don't, and he's standing in the doorway. Louis wonders if this might not be the unluckiest day of his life. He doesn’t know Zayn, beyond the brief glimpses of him he caught this evening, and he has his doubts about how sympathetic Zayn will be to his and Harry’s predicament.

 

At first, there is a very, very long moment during which Zayn watches Louis, startled at first, before his expression morphs into something worse; darker. And then his gaze skips past Louis to Liam, whose hand has gone limp under Louis’, and Zayn’s body moves forward almost of its own volition.

 

Louis ducks under his arm, spins quickly to keep his back to the wall, and backs away to the other side of the bed.

 

“What did you do?” Zayn hisses, following him.

 

“Take it easy,” Louis says, holding up his hands. “I didn’t – this wasn’t me. And I didn’t shoot him either, for what it’s worth.”

 

Zayn shoves Louis with more force than Louis would have given him credit for, in that ridiculously expensive suit and hair that’s been styled within an inch of its life. Louis stumbles and finds himself falling, and then Zayn is on him, fingers buried in the collar of Louis’ shirt, a knee on either side of Louis’ ribs.

 

“Tell me what the fuck is wrong with my husband before I damage you, Tomlinson,” Zayn snarls, slamming Louis against the floor for emphasis.

 

And then Zayn goes still, and Louis, who is trying to get some of his wind back, has no idea why until he hears Harry’s quiet drawl.

 

“This is the type of thing that gets you sent to prison, you know. Probably you did know; the lawyer thing, and all.”

 

Louis doesn’t know what Harry’s doing, what his leverage is over Zayn, but then Zayn’s fingers curl more tightly around Louis’ collar anyway and Louis can’t focus on anything much broader in scope than that.

 

“I’d like us to be clear on one thing,” Zayn bites out, through gritted teeth. “I will do whatever it takes to save his life. Whatever. It. _Takes_. So bury that needle in my neck or put it away.”

 

There’s a beat of silence, and then Louis gathers his thoughts and bursts out, “His kidneys aren’t processing the pain meds.”

 

Zayn’s fingers tighten marginally. Louis would rather not be asphyxiated by a lawyer, thanks; he can think of about eighty-five more dignified ways to die.

 

“When he was kid, he went through all of this – he’s got a kidney that’s not right, they gave him the wrong pain meds – you need to get someone.” Louis doesn’t even need to try to look earnest; he’s pretty sure the strain in his voice sells that, because the pressure from Zayn’s hands is painful and somewhere behind them, Liam is struggling.

 

Zayn seems to realize the latter part of that even as he releases Louis and climbs to his feet. He’s already out of the room, calling for help, when Harry tosses aside the needle he’d been holding and grabs Louis’ hand, pulling him to his feet.

 

“We’ve got to _go_ ,” Harry hisses, and there’s real fear in his eyes, beyond what Louis had even seen the day they escaped. Maybe it’s because they’ve had a taste of this now; a taste of freedom, and Harry can’t bear to relinquish it. Louis can’t either, he knows that.

 

And yet – he hesitates, watching Liam, whose chest is rising and falling still but almost imperceptibly.

 

“What if he dies?” Louis asks, which is a question that is less hardened convict and more someone else, someone watching his best friend disappear into an ambulance.

 

Harry tightens his grip on Louis and physically drags him from the room. “Then we’re in a lot of trouble.”

 

\--

 

Harry drags Louis down a back stairwell, and it’s incongruous: Harry is in his borrowed scrubs and Louis’ got Niall’s snapback tucked low over his face to conceal the scar, while behind them the sound of raised voices echoes down the hall. Louis wishes he had time to stop and appreciate the chaos.

 

“Come on,” Harry mutters under his breath, and Louis doesn’t know if he’s urging Louis to go faster or his own legs.

 

They almost  _fall_  through the doors and into the night air, crossing the parking lot to the nondescript pick-up Niall let them borrow, Harry’s hand gripping Louis’ so hard he might break it.

 

Harry tosses Louis the keys across the hood, and then they’re both in the vehicle, circling around the rows of cars and out of the parking lot with a calm that Louis doesn’t feel. He has no idea how long it will take Zayn to explain to the police that he’s seen them, but he will, Louis knows; Liam has history with him, is a soft touch under that hard-nosed detective he shows most people, but Zayn doesn’t owe Louis anything. He’s a prosecutor, and a smart, tough one, if Niall is to be believed.

 

Louis pulls up at a red light.

 

Harry’s fingers tap out a nervous rhythm on his thighs, and Louis has one hand draped casually over the steering wheel as though they’re out on an afternoon cruise. It’s less a reflection of how he actually feels than it is a habit. The car is silent, because they never bothered to turn the radio on, and Louis wonders if that’s a real thing; that time does pass more slowly when you want it to  _fly_.

 

The light is still red.

 

From far away, the sound of a siren creeps in under Louis’ consciousness, and he jerks his head, looking in the rearview mirror. There’s nothing, yet, but the siren is drawing closer, and Harry hears it now too, his fingers gone still.

 

“Louis,” he says tensely. “Go.”

 

“There’s a fucking traffic cam.”

 

Harry leans forward to look out the front window and swears. Cocking his head, he listens for the sirens again. “It doesn’t matter. We have to risk it, they’re coming.”

 

“It’s as like to be an ambulance as anything,” Louis says through gritted teeth, because Harry is speaking in the same voice as Louis’ cautious side, which has always fucking sounded like Liam and isn’t making things any easier. “We’re near a hospital.”

 

“What if it’s not?” Harry demands.

 

“What if it is and we’re photographed blowing the light?” Louis returns. “I’m not going back to prison because were pulled over for a  _traffic violation._ Think about it. There hasn’t been enough  _time_  for it to be the police, or at least, not for us.”

 

“Fuck,” Harry says succinctly.

 

It’s less than a minute later when the ambulance crests the hill and blows past them, sirens wailing. Harry actually, physically, makes a  _sound_  of relief. Louis follows it through the intersection as the light flickers to green.

 

By the time they make it back to Niall’s – hurtling up four flights of stairs, fumbling with keys, finally ramming the right one home and tumbling inside – Harry is so rattled that he gropes for the edge of the couch in the dark and sits down hard on it, hands shaking.

 

“Fuck,” he keeps saying, dragging his hands through his hair. “Fuck.”

 

Louis is kneeling before the coffee table, ramming bullets into the handgun Niall left with them ‘just in case’ –  _don’t get into any bloody shootouts with the police; you won’t win and I’ve gotten a bit attached_  – and not looking at him.

 

“It’s not worse than escaping from prison,” Louis points out, slamming the barrel home and setting the loaded gun down on the table.

 

“I knew what were in for, that time,” Harry says, his palms against his forehead, fingers tangled in his hair. “I didn’t have a plan this time around.”

 

Louis climbs to his feet in one fluid motion and comes around the coffee table, dragging Harry into his arms. Harry has his own arms wrapped around himself and does not return the hug, but he folds himself into it anyway. There’s a long moment of silence while they sit there in the dark, the only light in the room coming from the moon as it filters through the crack in the curtains.

 

“Thought he was going to strangle you,” Harry mumbles into Louis’ shirt.

 

“ _I_  thought he was going to strangle me,” Louis replies. “He really wouldn’t, though; he’s a lawyer, they hire people to do that kind of dirty work for them.” He considers. “Unless I actually  _had_  poisoned Liam, and then he might have.”

 

“So all of that was true, then, what you said,” Harry says.

 

“Yeah.” Louis sounds vaguely bemused, like he’s not sure how Harry thinks he could’ve pulled that story out of thin air. “Liam’s got a gimp kidney. I almost wanted to mock Zayn for not knowing, except for the bit where his knuckles were holding shut my airway.”

 

“It’s probably not something that comes up,” Harry says thoughtfully, and Louis knows he’s coming off of his panicked adrenaline high because the notion of Harry defending Zayn is vaguely amusing. “I wouldn’t want anyone to know. If I had a weakness like that.”

 

“He’s never treated it like a weakness,” Louis answers, finger tips trailing through Harry’s hair now that Harry’s shaking less and Louis feels like he can relax his grip on him. “He never has more than one beer and he stays away from Aspirin. Other than that, you’d never know.”

 

Harry doesn’t say anything for a long time. Then: “Niall’s going to kill us.”

 

“Niall’s going to kick us out,” Louis corrects. “And I don’t especially blame him.”

 

“We can try to leave the city,” Harry suggests. “Hit the open road.”

 

“With whose money?” Louis asks, lips tugging upward.

 

“We’ll hold up gas stations,” Harry replies.

 

“Yes, we’ll escape the massive police manhunt by committing further crimes,” Louis says dryly.

 

“We’ll rob banks,” Harry continues, ignoring him. “I’ve always wanted to rob a bank.”

 

“Who doesn’t?”

 

Harry tips his chin up to look at him. “If we don’t have any other options – I have a sister. She lives here in town, she’d – ”

 

“Do you want to drag her into this?” Louis asks seriously.

 

Harry expels a breath. “No. But we may not have a choice.”

 

They lapse into silence.

 

\--

 

It’s not even six a.m. when someone knocks on the door. The sound is startlingly loud in the otherwise quiet upstairs apartment. Louis climbs over Harry while the latter is still blinking his eyes open, and snatches up the gun from the coffee table.

 

“Lou – ” Harry begins, but he doesn’t even know where he’s going with that, and it always takes him a few minutes to corral his thoughts into some semblance of order in the morning. He pushes himself up onto his elbows, just as Louis takes up a spot next to the door, gun clasped in both hands.

 

“Who is it?” His voice is rough with sleep.

 

There’s no answer.

 

Then: “Not the police, or I probably wouldn’t have knocked.”

 

Harry makes a face that’s a cross between startled and confused, because if it’s _not_ the police, then it’s certainly someone who knows they’re _expecting_ the police, and if it were Niall he’d have walked right in. Who else even knew they were there?

 

Louis makes a decision, reaches across, and tugs the door open, gun trained on the widening space.

 

Zayn is wearing the same suit as the night before, rumpled now, and his hair looks like it’s been distractedly flattened, maybe out of habit. He doesn’t cross the threshold, a wary eye on Louis’ gun, and he very slowly, almost mockingly, raises his hands in surrender.

 

“Can I come in?”

 

Louis uncocks the gun and mutely gestures with it that yeah, Zayn should come inside. He very deliberately steps into the apartment, and Louis pushes the door shut behind him.

 

“Is Liam all right?”

 

Zayn, who appears to have engaged in some kind of odd staring contest with Harry, who’s propped up on his elbows on the couch, turns.

 

“He’s – good. It was touch-and-go, but I guess Liam’s old hat at this by now.”

 

Louis almost smiles in relief. “Did you know?”

 

Zayn doesn’t even have to clarify. “Yeah. I knew, I just didn’t – think. And I guess you knew him back when it was bad.”

 

Louis leans against the wall, setting the gun on top of the television. “Did he tell you that?”

 

Zayn reaches up to rub at his eyes before he answers, a simple white-gold wedding band catching the light as his hands move. “Yeah. He woke up for a few minutes this morning. He was not exactly coherent, but he managed to convey how very much you annoy him.”

 

“Ah.” Louis nods. “Excellent.”

 

“He also mentioned that it wasn’t you who shot him,” Zayn says, serious.

 

“Can’t a guy break out of prison without people thinking he’d murder a police officer?” Harry deadpans.

 

“It did seem likely that it was us,” Louis admits. “But it wasn’t. I swear it on Liam’s life.”

 

Zayn gives a short, painful laugh. “Don’t.” He can’t articulate why that seems fragile when _Liam_ has never seemed fragile. He just knows he’s been lucky twice now and Zayn would rather rely on anything other than luck when it comes to the person he loves most.

 

“Then I swear it on mine,” Louis says quietly. “And I swear it on Harry’s.”

 

Zayn nods, accepting that. He’s looking at the ground, but his gaze sweeps up, across, and fixes on Louis when he adds: “You also saved his life.”

 

Louis shrugs, ill-equipped for whatever he can pick out in Zayn’s eyes. “Not really. The doctors would have gotten it sorted in the end.”

 

“Maybe not.”

 

“It’s not – I didn’t do it to be a big hero, or because I thought it’d get me out of more prison time,” Louis says. “And I didn’t do it for you, either.”

 

“I don’t care,” Zayn replies, because he really doesn’t. “What matters, what’s quantifiable, is that it was done.”

 

There’s a long beat of silence, during which Louis can hear the passing of traffic on the road outside, even through closed windows and drawn curtains.

 

“I’ve got to go,” Zayn says at last. “So do you.”              

 

"How did you find us?" Harry blurts out.

 

"I knew what time you left the hospital." Zayn shrugs. "I had them rewind the security tapes from the parking lot back until I could tell what kind of car you were driving. And then I came back to the neighbourhood where Liam was hurt and drove around until I found it. It was just a hunch."

 

Almost as though he’s forgotten until now, Zayn reaches into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and takes out an envelope. He sets it down on their coffee table and takes a step back.

 

“What’s that?” Harry asks.

 

“This is the only grace I can give you,” Zayn answers. “I appreciate what you did for Liam but after this, we’re even.”

 

Louis and Harry simply watch him. After a moment, Zayn shifts his weight; a floorboard creaks under him. He turns and leaves the apartment, shutting the door in his wake. Louis goes to the window and watches him come out of the building down below, glancing up the street before he steps off the curb in the grey stillness before dawn.

 

“Louis,” Harry says, his voice sounding strange.

 

“Yeah.” Louis turns away from the window and sees that Harry is holding the envelope, looking inside it.

 

“There’s money in here.”

 

Louis crosses the room at once, leaning over the back of the couch to see. “How much?”

 

Harry shakes his head. “Dunno. Lots.”

 

He takes the bills out of the envelope and starts to count them out on the coffee table according to denomination. Louis gently picks up the envelope from where Harry left on the cushion next to him. Inside, in neat black ink, it reads:

 

_Disappear._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All right, team, so we've got one more chapter coming up and that's it for now. However, I'm totally sketching out a sequel, so hopefully you guys are down for some more Criminal!Larry and LawEnforcement!Ziam after a short break. :)


	8. With Our Minds and Curtains Closed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this is shorter than the chapters I've been posting (and a day late, for shame!), but it's more of an epilogue/intro to the sequel than anything. There's a bit of a time skip between the end of the last chapter and this one. I'm going to write the sequel in a few weeks, hopefully. :)

“ _Liam Payne_ , where have you been all my life!”

 

Eleanor is striding across the station toward him, grinning like anything, and Liam can only grin helplessly back, ears slightly pink.

 

Zayn, who has an arm tucked around Liam’s shoulders and is leaned in close, watching Liam smile in that intense, single-minded way he has, is wearing a little smile of his own. When Eleanor reaches them, she wraps them both in a brief hug at the same time.

 

“Stop making Not-Safe-For-Work eyes at him,” she chastises Zayn.

 

“I’m making the same eyes I always make,” Zayn protests, good-natured.

 

“I know, and they’re always Not-Safe-For-Work,” Eleanor replies. “You have a consistent urge to push him onto a desk and – ”

 

“I’m going to work now,” Zayn interrupts.

 

“Pick me up at five, then?” Liam asks, glad for the distraction.

 

“Yeah. Call me if you get tired.” Zayn leans in to press a kiss to the corner of Liam’s mouth.

 

When he’s gone, Eleanor tugs Liam into another, longer hug.

 

“I missed you, idiot,” she says into his shoulder.

 

“You did not,” Liam teases. “Secretly you like stalking around the department like Rambo.”

 

“Admittedly it was lawless around here without you. I ran amok.” She releases him and tugs at the collar of his shirt. “Can I see?”

 

Liam obligingly pulls aside his collar and tilts his head away so that she can get a look at the puffy pink scar where the bullet went in, over a month ago.

 

“It’s less impressive than I thought it would be,” she decides.

 

“Just think,” Liam says, as though they are reminiscing. “The last time you looked at it, you put your grimy sock on it.”

 

“My socks are not _grimy_ , Payne.”

 

Liam grins.

 

“Do you have anything cooler?” Eleanor pokes him in the side – gently. “Do you have cool emergency kidney surgery scars? Can I see those?”

 

“Nothing to see, I’m afraid,” Liam says.

 

“Well, can I parade you around the station and introduce you as Zombie Cop?”

 

“...Because of my well-known lifelong penchant for biting people?”

 

“Because you’re back from the _dead_ ,” Eleanor corrects, like it’s beyond obvious. She grips him by the crook of the arm and steers him toward their desk in the back. “Come on. I need to catch you up on everything.”

 

“Have they found Tomlinson yet?” Liam asks.

 

Eleanor shrugs. “We think they’ve moved on to another jurisdiction. We haven’t heard hide nor hair about them in weeks and the chief’s back-burnered it for the time being. Reckon they’re someone else’s problem now.”

 

“Yeah,” Liam says lightly. “I reckon.”

 

\--

 

The door to the apartment slams.

 

“That bad?” Louis already knows what that sound means.

 

“I’m a terrible postal clerk,” Harry groans. He appears in the doorway to the living room a moment later, making a disgruntled face that pretty much matches with the terrible button-up shirt he is wearing. It has the postal service’s crest sewn prominently onto the breast pocket, along with a name – not Harry’s real name, to be sure, but the one they’ve come up with so he can apply for jobs.

 

They still have some of Zayn’s money, of course, but it’s an emergency fund – they were able to pay for travel as far as they wanted to go, and then put down first and last month’s rent on a flat, but whatever’s left is being kept for a rainy day. Realistically, they should both be working, but they haven’t found a convincing way to hide Louis’ scar yet and Harry thinks it’s safer if only one of them goes out into the world first anyway, just to test the waters. If they’re seen together, they might trigger peoples’ memories, and that’s the last thing that they want.

 

Alone, Harry is just a bright-eyed kid with a mop of hair, and if people give him a second look, it’s not because they’re fairly certain they’ve seen him on a Wanted ad.

 

“It’ll get better,” Louis promises, reaching out for Harry, and Harry crosses the room like he’s been magnetized and collapses into Louis’ side on the sofa.

 

“I know,” he says, but he doesn’t sound convinced.

 

“Is it still better than prison?” Louis asks

 

Harry looks up at him like he’s being thick. “Only a hundred thousand times better than prison.”

 

Louis kisses him on the forehead. “Just checking.”

 

Gently extricating himself from Harry, Louis gets to his feet, leaving Harry to collapse sideways into a heap on the sofa cushions, from which he doesn’t not bother to stir.

 

“I’m going to order takeaway,” Louis says, trying to hide his amusement. “Thai or pizza?”

 

“We can’t afford takeaway,” Harry mumbles into the sofa.

 

“My treat,” Louis offers.

 

“Our money comes from the same place,” Harry points out, his voice still muffled by the cushions.

 

There’s a beat. Harry only has time to start wondering if he should be suspicious when Louis says: “Not all of it.”

 

Harry does lift his head then, frowning. “You have money?”

 

Louis shrugs, trying to put it lightly. “Coming in. Not much, but some.”

 

Harry sits up. “From what?”

 

Louis suddenly looks uncomfortable, like he’s been so sure of something and now he’s in doubt about it. “I’ve just been running a few, really small... I'm going to call them business ventures?”

 

“Business ventures,” Harry repeats.

 

“Yeah.” Louis’ mouth flattens, and he nods, like, _no big deal._

 

“Legal business ventures?” Harry tries.

 

“There’s a bit of a grey area there,” Louis begins, but he stops when Harry’s eyes widen.

 

“Lou, tell me you're _not_." Harry flails his arms weakly, like he's not sure how he's supposed to react. "We've been out of prison for _fifteen seconds_.”

 

"Yeah, I know. Been using my time wisely." Louis scratches the back of his neck, surveying Harry. "I've covered my bases. It's all small-time stuff, not the kind of thing that the cops even bother chasing down."

 

"Yeah, but what if they do?" Harry asks.

 

"They won't," Louis says firmly. "I know we agreed we wouldn't - "

 

"We agreed that  _you_  wouldn't," Harry corrects. "I don't - know how to do any of that stuff."

 

"I know," Louis says. "But listen, you can work, yeah? I can't." He fingers the stubble on his face, which is not nearly enough to cover the scar that keeps him from leaving the house, most days. "I hate that we're broke and I can't do anything about it. Life on the outside was supposed to be better."

 

"It  _is_  better," Harry says, and he gives in and stands up so that he can settle into Louis' side. "That's why I don't want to go back."

 

Louis curls an arm around him, thumb ghosting over Harry's cheek, tracking his jawline. It's a trick in and of itself because Harry's so much taller, but Louis doesn't mind. "Do you think I'd let anyone send you back?"

 

"I don't want either of us to go back," Harry says firmly.

 

"Then we won't," Louis replies. "Cross my heart, Harry Styles."

 

Harry cranes his neck down to examine his nametag. "I think you'll find it's Gregory Jones."

 

Louis tugs fondly at a curl. "I still think we should've gone with Blade Lightningfist."

 

"Yeah, that wouldn't have been conspicuous at all."

 

Louis grins. "Sometimes you've got to live a little."

 

"Hi, my name is Blade Lightningfist," Harry announces. "You can call me Blade Lightningfist. No short form."

 

"Descended from a long line of Lightningfists," Louis adds.

 

"We're originally from Sweden."

 

Louis laughs, and Harry's grin climbs a notch.

 

"We're going to be okay," he says suddenly, with conviction.

 

"Of course we're going to be okay," Louis answers.

 

“But I wish you weren’t involved in ‘business ventures’,” Harry continues, because Louis isn’t off the hook.

 

“I could teach you how,” Louis suggests, nudging him. “Drag you into my life of crime and delinquency.”

 

“Stay away from me, you vagrant,” Harry says, grinning. He pushes him away and ducks as Louis reaches out to mess up his hair.

 

“Vagrant, is it?” Louis loftily ignores Harry's smug _well-if-the-shoe-fits_ expression and pulls out his phone. “That's it. No takeaway for you."

 

“I’m not eating the proceeds of crime anyway,” Harry tells him.

 

"Who says I'm buying you any?"

 

"You'd share."

 

“How's this: you can watch me eat it,” Louis suggests, straight-faced.

 

Harry is less successful at biting back a smirk. “Do you promise to eat it in a sexy way?”

 

“Not remotely.”

 

Harry sighs exaggeratedly. “Then I s’pose I can benefit from crime just this once.”

 

“Only if you’re sure,” Louis says, amused.

 

Harry shuts his eyes and flops back onto the sofa dramatically. “Do what you must.”

 

\--

 

_Louis has picked up a few useful skills in the past ten years. He can empty bank accounts, defraud the government in fifteen different ways, and gain access to classified corporate information. He’s broken into cars, been shot at, and jumped out of a two-storey window with only a twinge in his ankle to show for it. He’s used to all of this; no longer thinks of it as anything special._

_He has really been trying not to be conspicuous like that since he got out of prison, though. He has a scar on his face that’s tough to hide, and what’s more, he can’t afford to draw the attention of law enforcement. It used to be a calculated risk that he was willing to take in order to make money. Now he has Harry to think about (and frankly, he thinks about Harry a lot)._

_Harry works eight-hour days at a post office and sometimes takes night shifts at a bakery, and all in all it has the combined effect of wearing him out and making Louis feel extremely guilty. So eventually Louis turns to what he knows best, the quickest ways to make money, because he feels like he’s caught between a rock and a hard place and he doesn’t know what else to do._

_At first, they’re small scams. He’s not lying to Harry when he says they’re low-risk. The cops don’t bother going after the little fish, most of the time. It’s the big suckers raking in the big coin that they bother with. After a while, though, Louis finds himself upping the stakes just a little bit each time. It’s always been this way; he likes to challenge himself. And after all, he keeps not getting caught; why not take a bit more of a risk? He doesn’t tell Harry this, though, because Harry’s working himself into the ground and when he comes home, Louis doesn’t want to waste what time they have arguing (because it feels like they've borrowed every day they're free)._

_Still, though, making money illegally isn’t something that you can keep to yourself, and it’s not easy, or everyone would be doing it. Sooner or later, Louis makes contacts in the organized crime circuit in town, and sooner or later, someone notices that he has a particular set of useful skills and a scar down his face that reminds them of someone. Honestly, when Louis thought about taking risks, he never thought about this part of it. But it happens._

_It’s almost September when Harry comes home to an empty apartment._

_The front door is ajar, and Harry pushes it open cautiously, heart beating loudly in his ears._

_"Lou?"_

_There's no damage to the door jamb; not a stick of furniture out of place inside the apartment. There's no sign of a struggle at all._

_But Louis isn't there. And when he doesn't come back the next day, or the day after, Harry is left sitting on the rusted-out balcony, sleepless, his phone clenched in white-knuckled fingers because who do you call when the only person in your world is very suddenly missing?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sequel is [here.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1168224)


End file.
